PCBS Itching to Ban Proprietary Trading
On 15 March 2013, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS) published its Third Report on proprietary trading within banks.
The PCBS considers that there is no commonly-accepted definition of proprietary trading and recognises that most activity undertaken by banks results in some form of proprietary position. However, it is primarily concerned with trading in which a bank uses its own funds to speculate on markets, without any connection to customer activity. It accepts that proprietary trading results in risks which are not necessarily any different from those associated with other banking activities, many of which actually made a greater contribution to the financial crisis. Nonetheless, it considers that the argument that proprietary trading can have harmful cultural effects within a bank has been “convincingly made”, creating a conflict of interest between a bank’s attempts to serve its customers and the trading of its own positions and, as such, being “incompatible with maintaining the required integrity of customer-facing banking”.
Despite its in-principle opposition to proprietary trading, even outside of a ring-fenced bank, the PCBS recognises the practical difficulty in establishing a definition of “proprietary trading” which is capable of being effectively enforced, given its similarity to other activities such as market-making. Even alternative metric-based approaches, such as those being considered in the US, which track patterns of trading activity remain unproven, relatively complex and resource-intensive. Consequently, the PCBS believes that it would not be appropriate to attempt immediate prohibition of proprietary trading through the Banking Reform Bill (BRB). However, it does recommend that the current legislation require the regulators to carry out, within three years of the BRB being enacted, a report to include, inter alia, a full assessment of the case for and against a ban on proprietary trading. This report would be presented to the Treasury and to Parliament and serve as the basis of a full and independent review of the case for action in relation to proprietary trading by banks. In the meantime, the PCBS recommends that the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) monitor the main UK-headquartered banks’ assertion that they no longer engage in proprietary trading, and should use its existing tools such as capital add-ons or variations of permission to “bear down on such activity and incentivise the firm to exercise tighter control”.
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