REGULATOR PLAYING HARD TO GET

Financial firms and trade bodies are finding it harder to get in touch with senior officials in the Financial Regulator since Matthew Elderfield took office early this year. The Sunday Tribune quoted a variety of sources as saying that direct contact with top figures, such as Elderfield and his deputies, was being discouraged in favour  of lobbying through formal channels of consultation.
“As soon as these people were appointed, industry bodies were immediately onto them,” one source said.  “The industry feel they can go straight to the top – they are being conditioned to feel this – but there shouldn’t be any expectation that they will get a response.”
Central Bank  governor Patrick Honohan concluded in his report into the banking crisis that the Regulator, under former chief executive Pat Neary, was too deferential to firms it was meant to be regulating.