The British government of Rishi Sunak has presented its long-awaited program to reform the rules and regulations of the financial industry in a battery of more than thirty proposals, which include the elimination of community regulations and safeguards introduced after the 2008 global crisis in prevention of new bank bailouts.

The so

-called Edinburgh reform

, in reference to the Scottish capital where the roadmap Building a smarter framework for financial services in the United Kingdom was launched, aims to boost the growth of the sector and protect the international competitiveness of the City of London, which has fallen in position against Amsterdam and Paris since leaving the European Union.

"We are committed to securing the UK's status as one of the most open, dynamic and competitive financial services centers in the world," said Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt, before stressing that the reform package

"takes advantage of the freedoms of the Brexit" to create an "own, agile regulatory regime"

and in the "interest of British citizens and companies".

It represents the most sweeping proposal for financial reforms in nearly four decades and compares even with

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's deregulatory

Big Bang

, introduced in 1986. The discredited and short-lived government of Liz Truss, which fell in September under pressure from markets against his economic growth plan, he had dubbed the plan

Big Bang 2.0

, but his successor Sunak has disavowed that label in favor

of Edinburgh reform

.

The Scottish capital is, after London, the second most important financial center in the country.

"It is an ambitious plan to repeal EU legislation on financial services and replace it with a new framework tailored to the UK, which takes advantage of the new opportunities of our position outside the EU," Hunt explained.

However, economic analysts warn of the risk involved in repealing protections and guarantees that were specifically introduced with the aim of avoiding the need for new bailouts of banks and financial institutions.

In the United Kingdom alone, the then Labor government of Gordon Brown diverted some 150,000 million euros of public money in aid operations for the sector.

The center-left party, led by Keir Starmer with increasing prospects of victory in 2024, according to voting intention polls, dismissed Sunak's reform strategy as a

"race to the bottom" post-Brexit level of supervision.

.

For his part, the Prime Minister defended the plan, which contemplates greater

flexibility in the remuneration of bonuses for employees

in the sector, relaxation of the punitive regime against senior executives who did not act to prevent and correct deficiencies in their spheres of work, and the elimination of the system now in force for the compartmentalization of large entities in order to protect the retail banking business from the most risky operations of its investment divisions.

"The UK has always had and will continue to have a robust and respected system of regulation of the financial services sector. But

it is important to ensure that the industry remains competitive

," said the Conservative president.

The sector contributes 8.3% of the national GDP.

The Edinburgh reform

raises questions about the creation of a

Central Bank for Digital Currency

, which could lead to "British people using digital pounds, reaping the benefits of

blockchain

technologies " (based on bitcoin and other electronic currencies). .

But perhaps the most controversial proposal centers on the reform of the independent regulatory authority which, according to the current plan, would acquire a secondary role as a promoter and guarantor of "growth and competitiveness."

The experts see in this additional task a conflict of interest regarding the protection of the good behavior of the industry.

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