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Scrap ringfence rules to lift growth, banks beg Reeves
The Observer
|May 25, 2025
Some leading banks are calling on Rachel Reeves to ditch so-called ring-fencing rules which force them to separate high street banking from riskier investment banking arms.
The rules, drawn up after the 2008 global financial crisis, aim to ensure the savings of retail bank customers cannot be hurt from bank losses in deal-making or overseas expansion.
The banks claim that the rules, which cost them £1.5bn each year to implement, are no longer needed. If Reeves were to relax them, they say, it would free up billions to help advance her growth agenda. They hope to talk the chancellor into announcing a rule change that could free banks to use retail deposits to fund investment-banking deals in her Mansion House speech to the City on 15 July.
This story is from the May 25, 2025 edition of The Observer.
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