What is the role of the Non-Executive Director? Essentially the non-executive director’s (NED) role is to provide a creative contribution to the board by providing independent oversight and constructive challenge to the executive directors. The 1992 Cadbury Report initiated a debate about the main functions and responsibilities of non-executive directors. Today, it is widely accepted […]

On 15 October 2015, HM Treasury announced, in a policy paper on extending the senior managers and certification regime (SM&CR) to all financial services firms, that it was scrapping the controversial “presumption of responsibility”. This was the provision that, where there was a failing by a bank in an area for which a senior banker […]

In this report (originally published by PLC) Alison McHaffie (Partner, UK @ CMS) discusses the government’s decision to replace the controversial “presumption of responsibility” with a statutory “duty of responsibility” requiring senior managers to take reasonable steps to prevent regulatory breaches in their area of responsibility. The report also considers what this means in practice […]

Recently, the Treasury announced plans to extend the Rules of Conduct under the Senior Managers Regime to non-executive directors (NEDs), in Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated firms. The speech on 3 November 2015 by Andrew Bailey, CEO of the PRA on governance, spoke on the role of boards as being […]

The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) has published its latest appeal decision in relation to a decision by the Financial Conduct Authority to fine a non-executive director of an authorised firm £154,800 and ban her from performing any role in regulated financial services, due to her failure to disclose a conflict of interest. The […]

Following the Upper Tribunal’s decision concerning two non-executive directors of Arch Financial Products LLP (Arch) the FCA has published final notices. The FCA has: Imposed a £200,000 fine on Robert Addison, Arch’s former compliance officer, for breaches of Principles 1 and 7 of the FCA’s Statements of Principle for Approved Persons, withdrawn his permission to […]

The FCA and PRA have published a joint consultation paper (FCA CP15/5 and PRA CP7/15) on the revised position of Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) of UK banks in respect of the Senior Managers Regime (SMR), as well as the application of the presumption of responsibility provisions introduced by the Financial Services (Banking Reform Act) 2013 to […]

A non-executive director who failed to declare a conflict of interest has lost her appeal against the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which had fined her £154,800 and banned her from holding a regulated financial services role. In 2012, the FCA’s predecessor the Financial Services Authority (FSA) found that Angela Burns had “failed to act with […]