Andrew Bailey, handpicked by Chancellor George Osborne to become the new chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, is fond of recalling a moment during the 2008 banking crisis when he was chief cashier at the Bank of England.
When Royal Bank of Scotland was on the brink, its treasurer turned up in Bailey’s office in Threadneedle Street asking for cash – a cool £25bn – to keep afloat.
“The treasurer, John Cummins, came in and I thought he was going to have a heart attack … and he looked at me and said: ‘I need £25bn today, can you do it?’ I said: ‘Yes, I can do that,’” Bailey recalled in an interview with the Financial Times [paywall].
Such anecdotes are typical of Bailey, who at the age of 56 has been convinced to leave the role of deputy governor of the Bank of England to take the helm of the FCA.
He joined the Bank of England in 1985 and worked his way up, becoming chief cashier, with his signature on bank notes between 2004 and 2011.
He might not have become deputy governor of the Bank in April 2013 had Sir Hector Sants not decided to step down as the head of the nascent regulator now known as the Prudential Regulation Authority. Bailey was his deputy and ended up getting the top job.
Bailey’s focus until now has largely been on big City firms rather than consumers, but in 2012 he gave a speech in which he described himself as “like a dog with a bone” over the issue of free banking, which he said might encourage mis-selling of products.
