Graeme Johnston 26 January 2023
Yesterday’s announcement by the UK government that it plans to criminalise failure to prevent fraud in companies prompts two old memories:
- I first qualified as a lawyer in London in 1997. An early matter that I worked upon was a document by one of the uber-regulators of financial services in those days – the Securities and Investments Board – called ‘Responsibilities of senior management.’
I don’t have a copy any more and can’t find one online but I see that the subscription service Practical Law still retains one, the public summary of which is that it addressed “the responsibilities of senior management for establishing, understanding and applying adequate internal controls in financial institutions.”
The underlying point was that it was essentially
The idea of imposing such responsibility wasn’t very well received, as I recall.