Former UBS Banker Mark Yallop To Head Up New FICC Standards Board

Former senior banker, Mark Yallop, today was named as the first permanent chairman of a new industry body in the UK to clean up the financial markets following a series of wholesale market scandals, including manipulation of benchmark interest rates and foreign Exchange markets.

Yallop will lead the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities or FICC Markets Standards Board (FMSB), which was set up last July as part of a series of measures to clamp down on freewheeling financial markets. A number of banks have since been fined billions of pounds for trying to rig interest rate benchmarks and currencies.

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Yallop, an external member of the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority board since 2014, will start as chairman in July. Prior to that he was UK chief executive officer for UBS before parting ways in July 2014. He also spent six years as chief operating officer of ICAP plc and held senior positions at Deutsche Bank.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney commented: "The FMSB has a critical role to play in improving standards in wholesale markets and is a real opportunity for industry to show leadership in making markets fair and effective.”

The board has already commenced working on several new standards covering markets and commodities and will look at developing guidance on trading processes when markets are due to close or around the setting of benchmarks.

Although the FMSB has no statutory powers, a key priority will be to persuade other countries to replicate the board's standards given the cross-border reach of markets.