In July last year David Cameron promised to abolish the main City regulator, the FSA, and today his chancellor did just that.

George Osborne said the FSA will lose its name and powers, which will be split among several new regulators, chiefly the Bank of England.

The FSA will continue until 2012, by which time many of its staff will have transferred to one of two new Bank of England supervision units, with the remainder decamping to a consumer protection and markets agency and a financial education body.

Supervision will be split between the Bank of England and the consumer protection agency.

Within the Bank, Britain’s banks, building societies, insurers and other financial companies will be regulated, with a second body given overall charge of watching for trends in the industry that could trigger another financial crisis.

Hector Sants, the current boss of the FSA, will take on the role of chief executive of the first overseeing agency, which will be called the Prudential Regulatory Authority. It be separately constituted as a subsidiary of the Bank of England.

The second, more overarching, body, the Financial Policy Committee, will be firmly within Threadneedle Street. Sants will be a key figure on the body along with his new deputy, Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s chief cashier.

However, the governor of the Bank, Mervyn King, will chair both the committee and the prudential authority, and is expected to exercise ultimate control over all areas of supervision.

In effect, the FSA will be subsumed within the Bank of England and its senior staff will report to committees under the ultimate control of the governor.

Even the FSA’s offices in Canary Wharf are under threat. The Bank has about 500 staff working behind its austere high walls, sandwiched between the Royal Exchange and the old NatWest headquarters on Lothbury. It is understood that King is uncomfortable that the majority of his new staff will be several miles away on the Isle of Dogs and will be seeking ways to bring them into the City, if not to Threadneedle Street.

King said he was delighted Sants had agreed to tear up his resignation notice, which he offered earlier this year, and agreed to join him at the Bank. “In the new regime, regulation will reflect two different, though complementary, perspectives,” he said.

“The first, as now, is a bottom-up perspective, focused on setting institution-specific capital requirements. Those would be fixed requirements that banks could not breach.

“The second is an overall perspective, with a set of system-wide capital requirements that vary over the economic cycle. Judgments on the level of these capital buffers will be part of the remit of the new Financial Policy Committee.

“The prudential regulator, with its micro-prudential responsibilities, and the Financial Policy Committee, with its macro-prudential responsibilities, will need to work closely together, and that is one reason why it is sensible that they are both in the central bank,” King said.

Only weeks before the election, the City minister, Mark Hoban, was telling bankers that a new Conservative government would spend at least six months listening to their views before making a decision on whether to scrap the FSA.

But the chancellor, George Osborne, said further debate on the overall structure was unnecessary and he was ready to push ahead with radical reform.

Behind the revamp are several key figures, including Sir James Sassoon, the Eton and Oxford-educated former SG Warburg banker, who was an adviser to Labour until 2008 when he quit to join the Tories. He wrote a document last year calling for the FSA to be abolished. Sassoon, who became a Treasury minister in the new government, is expected to play a key role in pushing through the reforms.

Cameron said last year that the decisions that led to the financial crisis represent “a policy crisis of historic proportions” and “in the United States, they have called on the Federal Reserve, and it is time to call on the Bank of England”.

Spain +385 (So bet $100 to win $385)
Brazil +400
England +565
Argentina +585
Germany +1100
Netherlands +1000
Italy +1000
France +1500
Portugal +2500

And for all of you that will be slaving non stop in some bank, this is the Excel spreadsheet that will allow you to make world cup predictions while pretending to be working. Simply write in the scores in the white boxes and the rest is taken care of.

World Cup Prediction Spreadsheet

In the first quarter of 2010, Goldman made money on each and every single trading day. That’s right, the firm did not record a loss of even a cent on even one day in the last quarter. That’s 63 days profitable out of 63 trading days. Goldman is now the market – or, more in line with modern market reality, Goldman is the house, it controls the casino, and always wins. Congratulations America: you now have far, far better odds in Las Vegas that you have making money with an E-Trade account.

Adding to the “Alice in Wonderland” insanity of this announcement, the firm made over $100 million daily on 35 different days. Of Goldman’s $9.7 billion in total Q1 revenue, 76% came from trading. So forget investment banking, forget underwriting, forget advisory: over three quarters of the firm’s value is based on being the house to the biggest and most corrupt casino in existence.

Middle Eastern companies have received a lot of international attention in recent months, spurring investor demand for transparent and accurate information about regional market activities. Rasmala and RBS will be responding to this demand.

“RBS is actively expanding its Equities product offering in the region. This strategic partnership will complement our existing strengths in Corporate Advisory, Capital Markets, Treasury and Trade Finance. Joining forces with Rasmala demonstrates RBS’s continued focus and commitment to the Middle East & Africa business” commented Simon Penney (Head of RBS’s Global Banking & Markets Division for Middle East & Africa).

Commenting on the signing, Tamer Bazzari, CEO of Rasmala said “The alliance with RBS will ensure that our clients receive high quality research on companies listed in the Middle East combining Rasmala’s deep regional knowledge with RBS’s international experience.

With the development of Middle East capital markets, international institutions will become steadily more active in the region, and this alliance will enable both of us to serve them better”.

Zafar Alam, Head of Equities and Structured Retail, Middle East & Africa at RBS said RBS’s partnership with Rasmala will provide a compelling research and execution offering for our clients. “We are confident that Rasmala’s regional footprint and expertise in equity research and brokerage will provide comprehensive insight into Middle East listed companies to benefit international investors and institutions,” he added.

Rasmala’s brokerage business, headed by Khaled Masri, provides a full range of regional brokerage services in 14 markets. The joint venture with RBS is expected to considerably increase their client base and flows.

A total of 28 analyst teams at Zurich-based UBS were voted among the best researchers in the region, the publication said on its Web site today. Nomura, which jumped from 8th place, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse each had 22 favorably ranked teams.

The changing positions reflect upheavals in the industry, with banks purchasing rivals and analysts switching employers as bonuses were slashed. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index surged 61 percent from March 9 to Dec. 31, pushing the gauge to its biggest annual gain in a decade.

Tokyo-based Nomura, which bought Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s European operations after the U.S. bank’s bankruptcy in 2008, lured the largest number of new votes after poaching analysts from brokerages including Dresdner Kleinwort, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit.

Merrill Lynch fell to 5th place from 2nd in 2009, the magazine said. Deutsche Bank AG, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup were ranked 6th to 8th, respectively. New York-based Citigroup had won 3rd place in 2009.

The results were based on responses from more than 1,100 investors at about 500 institutions managing an estimated $5.4 trillion in European equities, Institutional Investor said.