Yahoo Finance FCA new chief Nikhil Rathi hires top team of women to stem financial scandals at the City watchdog
New chief seeks to change culture
(Getty Images)The Financial Conduct Authority today announced a line-up of big-hitting new female bosses to repair its reputation after a series of savings scandals including London Capital & Finance.
New chief executive Nikhil Rathi, who replaced Andrew Bailey when he moved on to run the Bank of England, has brought in a top team of women from business and law enforcement to executive roles across the regulator, which oversees 60,000 City firms.
Stephanie Cohen, a senior executive at investment giant BlackRock, will become chief operating officer.
Jessica Rusu, a former eBay Europe data analytics director and latterly chief data officer at challenger bank Chetwood Financial, will become the FCA’s first chief data, information and intelligence officer. Sarah Pritchard will become executive director of markets, in charge of supervising companies’ behaviour. She is currently a director at the National Economic Crime Centre and, as a lawyer by training, has worked in numerous government departments as well as risk and compliance at HSBC.
Emily Shepperd will take up the new role as executive director of authorisations — a role that will act as the gateway to companies and individuals wanting to do regulated financial services activity. She is currently director of customer services and change at Aegon UK and before that, EMEA chief operating officer for Bank of New York Mellon.
Clare Cole will become director of market oversight, leading the regulator’s response to Lord Hill’s soon-to-be-released report into how the London Stock Exchange rules can be changed to encourage more tech firms to float here. She has been acting director since December and at the FCA since 2003.
The success of these new hirings will be key to Rathi’s reputation post-the LCF scandal. The Gloster Report into the affair found the regulator fell short in the way it repeatedly missed red flags, failed to act on concerns from the public and was culturally weak when it came to enforcement to find wrongdoing and protect consumers.
Rathi arrived as CEO from the LSE and claims to be reorganising the regulator to have an increased focus on consumers. The perception had been that the watchdog was attentively regulating the big City companies but not paying enough attention to issues such as surging numbers of risky investment companies targeting retail investors.
Rathi said the appointments “bring with them a deep understanding of the consumers we seek to protect, the markets we oversee, and all have track records for operational excellence.
“Their global experience and leadership, drawn from a variety of backgrounds, will be vital in ensuring we can act more quickly to reduce harm to consumers and ensure market integrity.”
The Government this week urged companies to appoint more women to senior executive posts.
