Prudential boss Thiam’s FSA censure “punitive”
Britain’s harsh regulations are making the country an unsafe place for chief executives, according to a lawyer acting for Prudential chief executive Tidjane Thiam.
Yesterday the Pru boss was censured by the FSA for not telling the regulator about a planned £30bn acquisition of AIA in 2010, according to City AM.
The regulator said that Thiam and others played a major part in the decision not to contact it.
But Stephenson Harwood lawyer Tony Woodcock said: “The UK is becoming an increasingly unsafe regulatory environment for CEOs. This is a classic example of retrospective punitive legislation, and it is bad legislation … because those who are subject to it learn little from this decision about where their obligations lie.
“Few, if any, could have identified from the FSA’s vague principles the precise point at which notification should have been made.”
In censuring Thiam, who becomes the first chief executive of a financial firm in the FTSE 100 to suffer such an ignominy, the regulator made no finding of lack of fitness and propriety in relation to him, an FSA spokesman said.
Woodcock added that despite the censuring, the FSA had not said Thiam was unfit.
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