As the CEO of a global bank, has the lack of clarity and agreement between different regulators in different markets made your role more difficult?
It has. If we wish to reform the financial services industry we should do it under the auspices of the G20. The Pittsburgh Agreement was announced the first time the G20 met, and was meant to be a collective G20 agreement on remuneration for the banking industry. The UK chancellor of the exchequer at the time, Alistair Darling, asked me if I would support those rules and I said I would if the whole G20 did the same. Unfortunately, the G20 to this day hasn’t collectively implemented the recommendations of the Pittsburgh communiqué and as such, we are long way from having a balanced field in regard to financial services.
Will there ever be that balanced playing field?
I don’t think there will. There are certain members of the G20 that are fundamentally opposed to having a level playing field on the basis that their economies are growing.