Six-year ban for Equitable boss

By THIS IS MONEY
Updated:

 

A FORMER chief executive of Equitable Life was today banned from holding a management role at a regulated company for six years.

The Financial Services Authority said Chris Headdon, chief executive at the world's oldest mutual life assurer for a short period until March 2001, was 'not fit and proper to hold a significant management role at a regulated firm' and has been banned from performing such a role until May 2010.

Headdon failed to disclose an important document relating to the life assurer's near-collapse.

'The FSA sets high standards by which we judge senior management. This includes the requirement that individuals deal with the FSA in an open and co-operative way,' Andrew Procter, the FSA Director of Enforcement, said in the statement.

Equitable Life almost collapsed in 2000 after the House of Lords ordered it to honour guaranteed policies sold in the high-interest-rate years of the 1970s and 1980s, a decision which cost it more than £1.5bn.

Headdon, 47, and his predecessor Roy Ranson, were heavily criticised in a recent report into events surrounding the Equitable debacle.

Judge Lord Penrose's report heaped blame on the company's former management and the lax regulatory environment for the crisis, which left thousands of policyholders out of pocket.

In April, Ranson, chief executive until 1997, avoided disciplinary action after the FSA decided that, at 73, he was unlikely to seek any further position within the financial services industry.

Equitable Life is pursuing a £3.3bn negligence suit against Headdon, Ranson and 13 other former directors for their role in the society's near collapse.

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