Own a shaky company? Big brother may well be watching you

Who said that there were no jobs around? There are at the Financial Services Authority who apparently have hired and trained close to 200 people to carry out a very specific and important task. The task is to monitor the financial behaviour of firms who the FSA have pinpointed as posing a systemic risk, according to submissions to the Treasury Select Committee.

The reports garnered by the monitoring staff will be known as “stress tests” and those companies who are deemed at risk of collapse will be discussed during formal yet internal meetings to be held by the authority in a regular six months basis.

The results of these tests will remain classified as the FSA believe that publishing the results of individual stress tests could be damaging to the market stability of the individual companies.

The purpose of employing these monitoring staff, according to a recent repost issued by the FSA is to provide the authority’s senior management with increased input designed to provide an oversight of the “supervisory approach” required to guide UK companies who are struggling through the current recession.

According to the FSA statement it is the agency’s intention to increase the coverage of their monitoring tem, and in order to remain on track to meet their target , the authority will have hired and trained close to 300 extra staff by the end of July 2009. The thinking behind this comprehensive and nationwide monitoring scheme is to anticipate and possibly “nip in the bud” some of the more glaring regulatory failings that have become fairly commonplace since the start of the UK financial crisis. Whilst the first and probably best known gaff was the collapse of the Northern Rock building society, which took everyone by surprise, there have been a few others that have also caught the authority unprepared.

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Tags: Bank, Banking, British Economy, Financial News, Financial Services Authority, FSA, Northern Rock, Recession