Last month, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority refused to publish a skilled persons’ report (section 166) about the way in which RBS’ Global Restructuring Group treated customers. It has now, however, agreed to hand a copy over to the parliamentary Treasury Committee.

GRG was a division of RBS, providing support to troubled businesses. More than 12,000 companies were transferred to it between 2007 and 2012. It was then accused of pushing businesses into bankruptcy unnecessarily, thereby earning various fees. The FCA appointed Promontory Financial Group and Mazars to investigate as 'skilled persons' under s166 Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

Leaks to the press ensued, not least to the British Broadcasting Corporation which said that it had seen the 361-page report and that it said that 92% of 'viable' firms seen by GRG had experienced “inappropriate action” that entailed the levying of charges and fees.

On the day of the US Presidential Election in November, in a perfect illustration of the maxim “pick a good day to bury bad news,” RBS said in a press release that Sir William Blackburne, a retired High Court judge, would oversee an automatic refund of certain fees and a new complaints process. Around the same time, the FCA published a summary of the findings that the BBC later criticised for bearing no resemblance to the report it had seen.

One important lesson to be learnt from this episode is the extent to which the regulator is prepared to go to keep the public from knowing even the gist of certain (if not all) 'section 166 reports.' It also shows the sympathy that parliamentarians have with this approach.

Nicky Morgan, the Treasury Committee's chair, showed this by listing the exceptional circumstances in which she thought that the FCA would be justified in publishing such a report. She wrote: "This is an exceptional case...the skilled person's report is now in the hands of third parties; it has been selectively reported by the media; it may enter the public domain at any time; the existing reviews of this matter by Clifford Chance and Lawrence Tomlinson contain conflicting findings; and by failing to disclose key details in its initial summary of the report, the FCA would appear to have lost the confidence of many former CRG customers in any subsequent account of its findings. Equally, the committee also understands that section 166 reports are an important part of the FCA's supervisory toolkit and that their effectiveness rests in part on a shared understanding that they are not normally published."

The FCA is now proposing to publish a summary of the report, with the Parliamentary committee checking its veracity by comparing it in private with the report itself. The committee proposes to appoint a legal advisor – the ubiquitous Andrew Green QC – to compare the two. A parliamentary spokesman told Compliance Matters: "The advisors will provide a report to the committee setting out their assessment as to whether or not the FCA’s summary closely reflects the findings of the skilled persons’ report."