Cash and carry
THIS seems an odd moment for the Securities and Investments Board, de- signed as the investors' protector-in-chief, to pick a quarrel with the high street banks. More obvious scenes of villainy might command its attention. The SIB, though, is committed to forcing the banks to drop half their (large) business in life-assurance and unit trusts. They must choose between selling their own policies and units but nobody else's, or recommending anyone else's before their own. The banks have now asked Sir Gordon Borrie at the Office of Fair Trading to say that this rule is unfair and anti-competitive. It would, say the banks, deny their customers the range that a financial supermarket exists to offer — own-label goods, and other labels, too. The rule would suit their competitors in the life-assurance companies. It derives from another protecting agency, Miboc, where the life companies were strongly repre- sented and the banks not at all. Miboc is now merged into the SIB, where Sir Mark Weinberg of Allied Dunbar, who was chairman of Miboc, is a deputy chairman. An unkind banker has dug out what Sir Mark was saying, two years ago, about financial supermarkets: 'Most people do not enjoy shopping around for financial services. I believe that if an organisation they trust, acting through an individual with whom they have established a person- al relationship, offers them a wide range of services and saves them from having to shop around, they will be extremely re- lieved. This is the route we are following.' Sir Mark, quoted by William Kay in his book Tycoons, planned a huge financial supermarket in conjunction with Jacob Rothschild. The deal fell through, and now Sir Mark is following a different route.
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