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Downing Street taps City vets to lead probe into 'toothless' FRC
Downing Street has handpicked a group of City veterans to launch a probe into the Financial Reporting Council just days after a report on recently collapsed facilities management and construction services company Carillion highlighted several failures in the market.
The government's crack team of City investigators includes Anne Richards, head of fund group M&G, Nikhil Rathi, chief of the London Stock Exchange, Mark Burgess, deputy chief investment officer over at Columbia Threadneedle, and Simon Fraser, F&C Investment Trust's chairman.
Others members of the 11-person panel include Peter Gershon, chairman of National Grid, Amelia Fawcett, a non-executive director at HM Treasury, and Mary Keegan.
The group have been asked to rule as to whether or not the watchdog's governance, impact and powers are "fit for the future".
Former Treasury head, and current chairman of Legal & General, John Kingman was tapped to lead the investigation into the FRC back in April following accusations by MPs that the industry body was "toothless" and "useless".
The list of names comes only a matter of days after MPs went to town on the watchdog in a report into Carillion's downfall that claimed the UK audit market was a "cosy club incapable of providing the degree of independent challenge needed".
The FRC is trying to toughen up after being criticised for letting major accountants off the hook. Last year it cleared KPMG over its work with HBOS just before it had to be rescued during the financial crisis.
The report argued that KPMG, which was recently let off the hook by the FRC over its work with HBOS just before receiving a bailout during the crisis, was guilty of a "long and complacent" run of audits at Carillion and that its actions were not a one-off but more of emblematic of a "market which works for the members of the oligopoly but fails the wider economy".
Kingman and his team are expected to complete their inquiry into the FRC by the end of 2018.