Former UK Financial Regulator Chief Joins Standard Chartered
January 29 2017 - 8:05PM
Dow Jones News
By Margot Patrick
LONDON -- Standard Chartered PLC said it hired Tracey McDermott,
former head of enforcement at the U.K. financial regulator, to lead
its public and regulatory affairs.
Ms. McDermott will start next month as a top adviser to Chief
Executive Bill Winters on bank rules and policy, joining the bank's
management team. She has a tough mandate. Standard Chartered has
been probed or penalized in the U.S., Asia and elsewhere for a
variety of alleged wrongdoing. In 2012, it admitted to disguising
transactions with customers from sanctioned countries and is being
investigated over possible further violations.
While focused on Asian markets, London-based Standard Chartered
also has to plan for the effects of Britain's exit from the
European Union, including any shifts in U.K. regulatory policy. The
U.K. has also been carrying out increasingly strenuous stress tests
on banks including Standard Chartered.
Hiring Ms. McDermott is the latest signal of Mr. Winters's wish
to clean up Standard Chartered and improve its returns since taking
over as CEO in June 2015. Standard Chartered was hugely profitable
when emerging markets were roaring, then got caught in a clamp when
bank capital rules started tightening a few years ago and commodity
prices cooled.
Ms. McDermott was acting CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority
until June, filling the shoes of the former boss, Martin Wheatley,
for nearly a year. Her reputation is largely centered around having
overseen some of the biggest financial enforcement cases of recent
years in Britain, including interest-rate and foreign exchange
benchmark rigging.
She had been a contender for FCA CEO, but instead resigned, and
it had been expected that she would resurface at a top bank.
Standard Chartered, along with its rivals, has hired a cast of
former regulators and law enforcers to beef up in regulation,
compliance and public affairs. Ms. McDermott's former posts
included sitting on the Financial Policy Committee, a powerful
board of policy setters at the Bank of England.
At Standard Chartered she will oversee public affairs,
sustainability and communications, teaming up with Mr. Winters and
the bank's new chairman, José Viñals, a former International
Monetary Fund official, as well as risk officer Mark Smith.
In a statement, Ms. McDermott said she was joining the bank at a
critical point. With roots back to the mid-1800s, Standard
Chartered finances global trade and lends to emerging-market
businesses and households. It overexpanded and over-lent to some
customers during a growth spurt between roughly 2002 and 2012.
Then, the commodities downturn and a slew of tougher bank rules hit
its business model, and exposed a freewheeling culture in some
corners of the bank.
Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 29, 2017 19:50 ET (00:50 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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