30 January 2017

Resignation from FSNF Executive Committee and termination of further participation in the Forum

Dear Daniel,

Dear Anthony,

There are several reasons for my decision to cease to participate in any way in the Forum:

• You are aware that I was very disappointed with the way the other members of the Executive Committee handled the launch of the recent Forum paper on Clearing. I was not informed about the content of this paper or the precise timing of its publication until 36 hours beforehand – knowingly in direct competition with my own publication. I do not feel that was an appropriately collegiate approach and certainly was not “agreed by consensus”.
• The Forum was set up to “debate evidence-based research” and to “follow a rigorous, analytical process”. (It was a shock to me to realise that the Leave campaign had not done this type of detailed work before persuading British voters to leave the EU.)There was a clear contrast between the outstanding paper on Equivalence from Norton Rose and the approach to calling for other papers on clearing and liquidity. My explicit criticisms of the quality of these papers were almost entirely ignored in a way that, after the Clearing paper process,  gives me no confidence that the approach in the future would be “rigorous”, and then “agreed by consensus”.
• I believe you have had copies of my comments on the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech. The Government has now had sufficient time to assess its options and I believe that this now-settled policy will inevitably inflict deep, long-lasting damage on the UK’s financial services industry. So the only patriotic course of action from now on is to campaign whole-heartedly for a decision by the electorate – probably in the form of a further referendum - explicitly on the terms of departure that the Government eventually proposes.

I would be most grateful if you would circulate this note to the members of the Advisory Council and remove my name from the website. Having informed my clients of my participation in the Forum a few months ago,  I will correspondingly inform them of my resignation.

© Graham Bishop