Cable: banking reform must go ahead despite slowdown

Business secretary Vince Cable has told banks that reform of their sector must go ahead despite recent economic turbulence. Banks have been lobbying the government ahead of the publication on September 12 of the Independent Commission on Banking's final recommendations for reform. The proposals are expected to include ring-fencing of banks' retail operations from their riskier investment arms.

Angela Knight of the British Bankers' Association has said that banks should be allowed to focus on lending to fuel the UK's economic recovery rather than being forced to accept more regulation.

But Cable told the Times that worries of a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis are overstated and said: "It is disingenuous in the extreme to use the current context to argue against reform. Banks are in a way trying to create a panic around something which they know has got to happen."

Read a full report at the Times (subscription). ·