THE chairman of Skipton Building Society, Mike Ellis, is one of 10 former HBOS executives who may face action following the publication of damning reports into the bank’s collapse.
To date, only Peter Cummings, who was head of corporate lending at HBOS, has been punished for his role. He was banned from taking another senior banking role and fined £500,000, but his colleagues all escaped individual investigation.
Andrew Bailey, deputy governor of the Bank of England, said: “The story of the failure of HBOS is important both to provide a record of an event which required a major contribution by the public purse, and because it is a story of the failure of a bank that did not undertake complicated activity or so-called racy investment banking. HBOS was at root a simple bank that nonetheless managed to create a big problem.”
Today’s reports by the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority, and by Andrew Green QC, are highly critical of the actions of the FCA’s predecessor, the Financial Services Authority.
The main report concludes that “ultimate responsibility for the failure of HBOS rested with the Board and senior management”.
Mr Green said the FSA’s failure to investigate further was “not reasonable” and its reasoning for not doing so was “materially flawed”.
He said: “The FSA gave no proper consideration to the investigation of any other individuals including former members of the Board (such as the former group chief executive officer, Andy Hornby, and the former chairman, Lord
Stevenson); and the FSA gave no proper consideration to an investigation of HBOS itself.”
On Mr Green’s recommendation the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority and FCA will now decide whether any former senior managers of HBOS should be the subject of an enforcement investigation, and any enforcement action is to be “taken as early as possible next year”.
Mr Ellis was group finance director of HBOS from 2001-2004 and 2008-2009, before becoming chairman of Skipton Building Society in 2011.
