“There is a view that people are not frightened of the FSA,” said Financial Services Authority chief executive Hector Sants in mid-March. “I can assure you this is a view I am determined to correct. People should be very frightened of the FSA.”
Perhaps the moral of the story is don’t mock the new, tougher FSA? On Tuesday, less than three weeks after the FSA’s Sants told the UK to be “very frightened” of the FSA (which drew a fair amount of snickering from the UK press), the FSA apparently did its best impression of the SWAT team that storms into Bud Fox’s office at the end of the movie “Wall Street.”
The Telegraph reports that yesterday, the FSA arrested two people, including a “senior corporate finance adviser,” as part of an investigation into insider dealing. To carry this “swoop” out, the FSA reportedly sent no fewer than 25 FSA staff, assisted by 11 officers from the City of London Police, into businesses in Greater London to execute the arrests and search warrants. Dow Jones reports that this is the first time that the FSA has ever arrested an authorized person at their place of work.
[…] weeks later, however, things seem different. The FSA’s first-ever criminal prosecution on March 27 for insider dealing was followed by the high-profile arrest on March 31 of two people, […]