Former UK Financial Regulator Chief Joins Standard Chartered

By Margot Patrick 

LONDON -- Standard Chartered PLC said it hired Tracey McDermott, former head of enforcement at the U.K. financial regulator, to lead its public and regulatory affairs.

Ms. McDermott will start next month as a top adviser to Chief Executive Bill Winters on bank rules and policy, joining the bank's management team. She has a tough mandate. Standard Chartered has been probed or penalized in the U.S., Asia and elsewhere for a variety of alleged wrongdoing. In 2012, it admitted to disguising transactions with customers from sanctioned countries and is being investigated over possible further violations.

While focused on Asian markets, London-based Standard Chartered also has to plan for the effects of Britain's exit from the European Union, including any shifts in U.K. regulatory policy. The U.K. has also been carrying out increasingly strenuous stress tests on banks including Standard Chartered.

Hiring Ms. McDermott is the latest signal of Mr. Winters's wish to clean up Standard Chartered and improve its returns since taking over as CEO in June 2015. Standard Chartered was hugely profitable when emerging markets were roaring, then got caught in a clamp when bank capital rules started tightening a few years ago and commodity prices cooled.

Ms. McDermott was acting CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority until June, filling the shoes of the former boss, Martin Wheatley, for nearly a year. Her reputation is largely centered around having overseen some of the biggest financial enforcement cases of recent years in Britain, including interest-rate and foreign exchange benchmark rigging.

She had been a contender for FCA CEO, but instead resigned, and it had been expected that she would resurface at a top bank. Standard Chartered, along with its rivals, has hired a cast of former regulators and law enforcers to beef up in regulation, compliance and public affairs. Ms. McDermott's former posts included sitting on the Financial Policy Committee, a powerful board of policy setters at the Bank of England.

At Standard Chartered she will oversee public affairs, sustainability and communications, teaming up with Mr. Winters and the bank's new chairman, José Viñals, a former International Monetary Fund official, as well as risk officer Mark Smith.

In a statement, Ms. McDermott said she was joining the bank at a critical point. With roots back to the mid-1800s, Standard Chartered finances global trade and lends to emerging-market businesses and households. It overexpanded and over-lent to some customers during a growth spurt between roughly 2002 and 2012. Then, the commodities downturn and a slew of tougher bank rules hit its business model, and exposed a freewheeling culture in some corners of the bank.

Write to Margot Patrick at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 29, 2017 19:50 ET (00:50 GMT)

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