The UK's Parliamentary Treasury Committee recently set the Financial Conduct Authority the humiliating deadline of 16 February to publish the RBS skilled persons’ report (issued under section 166 Financial Services and Markets Act). The regulator has failed to oblige, so the committee has taken matters into its own hands.

Suspecting that the FCA might be unable or unwilling to meet its deadline, the committee ordered the regulator to hand the report into RBS’s handling of small business customers in its Global Restructuring Group (GRG) over to it by the same date. The FCA did this and the committee has now published an unexpurgated version. The executive summary alone runs to 32 pages. At note 1.154 the report concludes that the application of equity participation agreements gave rise to the inappropriate treatment of customers. In the context of those customers with whom EPAs were agreed, the 'skilled person' firm of analysts concluded that inappropriate treatment was "widespread and also systematic."

The customers of the GRG - namely small businesses - are normally not the concern of Compliance Matters, but the publication of this damning report represents the first time that the Treasury Committee has ordered a recalcitrant regulator to publish its findings. Others may follow in future.