The former acting CEO of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority has agreed to join the bank that New York prosecutor Benjamin Lawsky once described as a "rogue institution" as its regulatory group head.

Just before the beginning of last year, the beleaguered bank said that it would plough US$1 billion into augmenting its compliance systems and headcount, the better to break the recent, punishing cycle of regulatory fines. In August 2014, the New York Department of Financial Services, with Ben Lawsky at the helm, fined the bank $300 million for failing to spot potentially suspicious transactions as part of its anti-money-laundering programme - the second time it had been fined for AML lapses. To add to its woes, the NYDFS blocked it from clearing transactions in US dollars for a few months and it still has a regulatory monitor scrutinising its compliance until the end of this year. Two years previously it had paid US regulators $667 million to offset their accusations that it had broached their sanctions policies as regards Burma/Myanmar, Iran, Libya and the Sudan.

Meanwhile, the authorities in Hong Kong (where the Asia-focused bank does much of its business) are investigating Standard Chartered for its conduct during an initial public offering in 2009. The London Financial Times says that the FCA has opened a probe into the bank because it doubts that its financial crime controls were sturdy enough when dealing with its correspondent banks overseas.

McDermott took over temporarily from FCA CEO Martin Wheatley, who had incurred the displeasure of Chancellor George Osborne, some say partly because of the way he had handled former enforcement chief Clive Adamson's mistake in letting slip to a reporter that an FCA investigation into life companies was going to take place, thereby wiping billions of pounds off the share prices of large insurance carriers by the beginning of the working day and creating a 'disorderly market' in a way that might have resulted in a jail sentence for a non-regulator. Once he realised his mistake, Adamson seems to have frozen up and not told Wheatley, who himself seemed slow to react to the crisis, and only a mollifying statement to the press in the early afternoon helped to soothe the markets a little. Wheatley himself ruled out resigning at the time but eventually went after Adamson had gone. McDermott was the "safe pair of hands" who took over first from Adamson and second (in September 2015) from Wheatley on a temporary basis. She was not offered the top job permanently, however, and left the FCA for pastures new last summer. She takes over her duties at Standard Chartered on 20th March and we wish her well.