Treasury Committee condemns FSA over RBS failures

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) "should and could" have intervened in the Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS's) ill-fated acquisition of ABN Amro, a damning report by the Treasury Committee concludes.

It said the UK needs a regulator "with the self-confidence to intervene" in similar cases in the future, "even if it might cause some destabilisation in the short-term". The report - published today - identifies issues arising from the FSA's own report into the failure of RBS that it said may merit further legislative or regulatory change. It added it was a matter of "considerable surprise" to the Committee that nobody had been held meaningfully accountable for the failure of RBS. RBS was bailed out by the Treasury in 2007 as the credit crunch took hold and the bank began to strugg...