Brussels, 16/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - Finance Watch, a body in Brussels that defends ordinary people's interests against the financial industry, has launched a campaign called “Change Finance!” to get things to change in the world of finance five years on from the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, that marked the start of the global financial crisis.
Finance Watch says it was time to put an end of the too-big-to-fails and genuinely hive off retail from investment banking. All derivatives should be sold on proper stock markets and there needs to be an introduction of regulations to cover high-frequency trading. It describes the governance of benchmarks and pricing on the commodity markets as a public good, and argues for them to be properly supervised and strongly regulated. So that the financial world works in the interest of the real economy, Finance Watch calls for the introduction of quality labels for financial products, tax incentives for long-term investment, rules to protect retail investors and pension funds against mis-selling. (MB/transl.fl)