Financial Conduct Authority Bans Ex Co-operative Bank Chair From Industry

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has imposed a ban on former Co-operative Bank chair Paul Flowers from the financial services industry.

Flowers was chair of Co-operative Bank from 15 April 2010 to 5 June 2013.

FCA detected that Flowers’ conduct showed a lack of fitness and propriety needed to work in financial services industry.

FCA enforcement and market oversight executive director Mark Steward said:  “The role of Chair occupies a unique place of trust and influence. The Chair is pivotal in setting expectations of a company’s culture, values and behaviours.

 “These high standards are what the financial services industry and the wider community rightly expect of its senior individuals. Where a Chair, or other senior individual, fails to discharge these standards the FCA will hold them to account.”

The regulator determined that Flowers has showed an unwillingness to comply with the FCA’s requirements and standards, as well as other legal, regulatory and professional requirements.

Flowers’ disregard for the standards shows a lack of integrity, and his future involvement in the financial services industry is expected to create problems for the consumers.

FCA noticed that Flowers used his work mobile telephone to make multiple inappropriate telephone calls.

He also used work email account to send and receive sexually explicit and otherwise inappropriate messages and to discuss illegal drugs, in breach of Co-op Group and Co-op bank policies.

Separately, the FCA has fined and banned former Deutsche Bank trader Guillaume Adolph for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR).

FCA detected that between 25 July 2008 and 11 March 2010, Adolph made requests to Deutsche’s CHF LIBOR Submitters to adjust their submissions to benefit his trading positions.

The regulator also found that Adolph took his own trading positions into account when acting as Deutsche’s primary JPY LIBOR submitter.

Image: The FCA has banned former Co-operative Bank chair Paul Flowers from the financial services industry. Photo: courtesy of hywards / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.