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Anorak's corner

Michael Crick | 16:37 UK time, Monday, 9 February 2009

I was at a party the other night, talking to a woman whose former husband sits in the House of Lords.

I was surprised to learn that her ex-husband is one of several members of the lords who once served as a European Commissioner.

Yet in his case, he sat on the Commission before Britain joined the EEC in 1973.

So who is he?

Comments

  • Comment number 1.


  • Comment number 2.

    Mr Crick, why are you wasting time on this trivia and not carrying out a tirade against Jacqui Smith's abuse of the system of MPs' allowances? Oh, I forgot, she is Labour!

  • Comment number 3.

    Here is something for the anoraks, why did Gordon and Tony move this FSA director to the LSE?

    Sir Howard Davies, had a "heightened interest" in toxic
    financial instruments in 2002, apparently did nothing to stop
    their toxic effect at the FSA, and is now a non-executive Director of
    Morgan Stanley and a member of the advisory boards of the China
    Banking Regulatory Commission (since 2003) and the China
    Securities Regulatory Commission (since 2004) and currently
    Director of the London School of Economics and Political
    Science.



    His appointments have included Executive Chairman of the
    Financial Services Authority from 1997-2003. He was the first
    Chairman of the FSA, the single financial regulator for the UK
    financial sector. He was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England
    from 1995 to 1997, until the incoming Labour government asked
    him to create the new regulator.

    In 2004 he became a non-executive Director of Morgan Stanley. He
    was appointed to the Board of Paternoster Limited in 2006 as a
    non-executive Director. Paternoster is a regulated insurance
    company that takes on the risks associated with companies' final
    salary/defined benefit pension schemes and assumes the
    responsibility for paying their pensioners into the future.



    In a previous post at:-

    /blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/01/shortly_after_labours_2005_ele.html

    I wrote:

    As far back as 7 years ago, on Tuesday, 26 February, 2002, 08:49
    GMT the ´óÏó´«Ã½ published this article entitled "A scandal waiting
    to happen?"



    in which Sir Howard Davies, then chairman of UK regulator the
    Financial Services Authority, was quoted warning about the
    perils of dealing with toxic financial instruments. During a
    speech on insurance regulation, Sir Howard remarked:

    "One investment banker recently described synthetic CDOs to me
    as 'the most toxic element of the financial markets today'. When
    an investment banker talks of toxicity, a regulator is bound to
    take a heightened interest."

    A year later this inconvenient regulator with "a heightened
    interest" was getting in the way of this new way of pumping up
    the money supply via the backdoor, and had often been reported
    warning of the asset bubble in property in the UK. So, in true
    Yes Minister fashion, Sir Howard Davies was shunted off to a new
    job at the London School of Economics.



    There is no way they can credibly say that nobody saw it
    coming. And that must include Gordon and Tony.



  • Comment number 4.

    #3 John_Gapper

    Thanks - especially for the links. Some really good "smoking gun" stuff there.

  • Comment number 5.

    This is my first visit to Mr.C's blog.

    Some pretty esoretic stuff in these columns.

    If this is anorak material, I'm off to burn a particular outer garment.

  • Comment number 6.

    Ralf Dahrendorf was a West German Commissioner back in the day and sits in the Lords now, I believe...

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