It is an honour to be invited to address this meeting of Italian banks, and a great pleasure for me to appear on the same platform as Professor Pippo Ranci, whom I came to know and admire when we were each discharging our responsibilities as energy regulators.
You have asked me to talk about trends in financial regulation. Before doing so, I should make some preliminary and cautionary remarks. I am conscious that the regulatory arrangements in any country have to be seen in a wide context: political, legal, historical. It simply is impossible to take one country's regulatory arrangements and transfer them to other countries without careful consideration of the wider context – the differences for example between the litigious US style of business and a style in much of Europe which relies more on compromise and business agreement is an obvious example. And it is simplistic to discuss transferring regulatory models and styles from one country to another without recognising these differences in context – although much discussion in this area does indeed fall into the trap of being simplistic. In talking this morning I will from time to time illustrate points by reference to the UK model and experience of financial regulation. I will do so for the obvious reason that it is the model and is the experience which I know most and about which I have thought most. But, although I believe there are lessons to be learnt from the UK, I am emphatically not arguing that the British model is necessarily the best model – or, indeed, that it is a model applicable in all countries at all times. There is a good English expression: "There are more ways than one to skin a cat".
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