Market know-how thin on the ground, warn EU finance experts

Date: 06/06/02

By Peter Chapman

THE EU's current shortage of financial market regulators will only get worse when the bloc admits new members, two of the Union's leading experts have warned.

'There is a global problem in terms of quality people,' Alexandre Lamfalussy, author of the EU's blueprint for securities market reform, told a recent conference of stock exchange managers.

The former central banker said that even well-qualified experts should be moved on after a few years in their jobs before they get stale and lose track of market developments.

'There is a problem for them to keep up with the fantastic pace of change,' Lamfalussy said.

'The only possible answer to take up this challenge is to have job rotation so people come and go. I know this may not be easy to organise or implement...but I don't know what else we can do.'

David Wright, head of the European Commission's financial services department, said a European initiative to 'train the regulators of tomorrow' could be the answer. He said even his own 48-strong team of officials and secretarial staff - responsible for drawing-up detailed draft rules in the Union's Financial Services Action Plan - is over-stretched.

'I can just about say that we are coping in the Commission,' Wright said. 'But pressures are very intense. In future, [with enlargement], that's not going to be sustainable.'

Wright said he was forced to enter into annual 'horse trading' with other parts of the Commission, such as the service and Mario Monti's competition department, for senior staff.

The warning comes as the European Parliament has recruited a ten-strong team of academics and industry experts to help hard-pressed deputies - many with little experience of financial markets - to scrutinise the complex draft laws that pass through the assembly.

The EU's current shortage of financial market regulators will get worse when the bloc admits new members, two of the European Union's leading experts have warned.