Governor of Bank of England may have withheld information from Select Committee

BOTH The Times and BBC have shared information about the past behaviour of current Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey in a previous role.

It is suggested that he withheld information concerning a potential conflict of interest when being considered for the role of Head of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) by the Treasury Select Committee.

He was heavily involved in advising the Treasury on the creation of the Asset Protection Agency which was responsible for overseeing the activities of the Global Restructuring Group (GRG) which was a division of the Royal Bank of Scotland (now trading as NatWest).

The GRG was formed at the time of the banking crisis and it is alleged that with the knowledge and perhaps prompting of the Asset Protection Agency that RBS withdrew loans from business customers who were under severe financial pressure between 2009 and 2013.

RBS was in serious financial difficulty at the time and by December 2009 was effectively taken over by the British Government (which still owns a significant number of shares in the group) which then tried to do all it could to keep the bank in business.

It is suggested that the welfare of business customers came second to the need for the Government to protect its interests and therefore large numbers of small companies were allowed to go bust as loans were withdrawn.

According to the BBC, in 2013, the FCA was ordered to investigate the scandal and it commissioned two reports whose findings were not revealed until the BBC obtained a copy of the document, which showed that more than 90 per cent of GRG customers had suffered mistreatment.

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