LONDON (Reuters) – British lawmakers drew a line on Friday under a spat between Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and the author of a report that blamed the collapse of an investment company on failures in his supervision.
Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee had asked Bailey to clarify “apparent contradictions” in evidence he gave to the committee earlier this month about his role in the 2019 collapse of London Capital & Finance.
At the time, Bailey was CEO of LCF’s regulator the Financial Conduct Authority. The investment company’s collapse left more than 11,000 investors nursing losses of up to 237 million pounds.
Former judge Elizabeth Gloster, who also appeared before the committee, said in a report that Bailey and his executive team were responsible for the collapse.
On Friday, the committee published a letter from Bailey responding to the points raised by lawmakers.
“The committee now considers the correspondence closed,” it said in a statement.
Bailey reiterated his apology to LCF bondholders for their suffering. He and two FCA executive committee members had asked Gloster not to name individuals as being responsible for LCF’s collapse, but Gloster challenged this and named them all in her final report.
“I was surprised that Dame Elizabeth added the paragraph in the final report criticising me and others for making the points that we made. I would have welcomed an opportunity to discuss this new criticism with Dame Elizabeth but she did not invite me to do so,” Bailey said in his letter.
In a separate letter to the committee on Friday, Gloster said she “rejected any suggestion” from Bailey that he had not been given “fair opportunity” to respond before the final report was sent to the finance ministry.
(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by William Schomberg)
