Charles Randell had no idea what was about to unfold as he made his way to Downing Street in September 2007. Days earlier, the then chancellor Alistair Darling had taken drastic measures, guaranteeing deposits at Northern Rock in an effort to halt Britain’s first bank run in 140 years.
The future Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) chair – a partner at “magic circle” law firm Slaughter and May at the time – had followed the news closely, but admits: “I had no idea that this was the beginning of a huge snowball that would lead to a much bigger set of problems – and a very long-running assignment.”
After a briefing with Treasury officials, who were familiar with Randell’s work on projects privatising the likes of British Gas, he was led down to No 11 Downing Street to meet his next client: Darling himself. “The whole thing is quite a blur,” Randell recalls.
What ensued was a five-year appointment as the government’s chief legal adviser, as ministers spent £1tn to bail out and stabilise a banking system whose bosses were slow to recognise the severity of the crisis. Randell recalls being “stunned” weeks later, as he watched Northern Rock’s board discuss paying dividends just weeks after Darling’s intervention, eventually spurring him to push for government contingency plans for the bank’s eventual nationalisation.
A year later, he was in the room as disgraced Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin was sacked by ministers, who had launched a bailout to save the lender from collapse that eventually totalled £46bn.
“He was very surprised, and I think the [RBS] board was quite surprised,” Randell recalls. “I think this was another example of the fact that many people took a while to adjust the understanding of how bad things actually were.”
It was a relentless role that sent Randell’s career in a very different direction tto what he had imagined. Born in 1958, he spent his formative years in postwar Germany, where his father worked as an intelligence officer for MI5. His family’s financial circumstances had been masked by subsidised military living, but the illusion was shattered when he was 12 years old and they returned to the UK during the economic doldrums of the 1970s. With no savings and only enough money to rent a small flat in Merton, south London, “it was quite a bleak comparison”, says Randell.
While he eventually secured a place at Oxford University, financial worries pushed him to switch from English to law. His father’s sudden death from lung cancer left his mother with a meagre civil service widow’s pension, and a young Randell prioritising a supportive salary over his own educational passions.
But a graduate position in 1980 would lead to “varied and interesting work” as Slaughter and May became the go-to law firm for privatisation projects that took companies such as British Telecom, British Aerospace and British Gas out of public hands. His reputation resulted in his financial-crisis-era role with the UK government, which was swiftly followed by a similar position advising the Portuguese government on its own crisis in 2012.
Randell eventually returned to the UK and in 2013 was convinced to join long-term efforts to reinforce the now tarnished financial system. He became a founding board member of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) – one of two City regulators that replaced the disgraced Financial Services Authority in the wake of the crisis.
There, he helped implement the first stress tests, meant to measure the financial strength of the banking sector, helping earn him a CBE for services to financial stability and climate change policy in 2016.
By 2018, he was persuaded to chair the second arm of the City’s regulatory system, the FCA, alongside Andrew Bailey, now Bank of England governor.
But the numerous issues plaguing the FCA – which was in desperate need of modernisation and was accused of failing to protect investors who had lost hundreds of millions of pounds though the Neil Woodford and London Capital & Finance scandals – led to a demanding four years.
While the FCA and PRA started with comparable workloads, the balance started to tip in 2014, when the former of the two bodies was put in charge of more than 30,000 consumer creditors, including derided payday lenders.
“The workload of the FCA was doubled but the staff wasn’t and the budget wasn’t,” Randell says. Next came fears over failed providers of funeral plans and concerns over the cryptocurrency boom.
“I probably look at the FCA as the most challenging job I’ve ever had. Many things were not fun … [but] there were other things that were hugely valuable to me,” Randell says, particularly connecting with real people affected by a financial sector often criticised for operating in its own City bubble.
He recalls meeting a man struggling to pay off a loan shark linked to a paramilitary group in Belfast, pensioners in Solihull struggling to access increasingly digital banking services and workers in Blackpool struggling to manage finances on meagre benefits.
They left such lasting impressions that Randell, who left the FCA after four years in 2022, was spurred on to join the Financial Inclusion Commission in November: a group of experts that sponsors research and lobbies for accessible financial services for vulnerable consumers.
Its work is now set to influence Labour’s financial sector agenda, with Randell among 10 independent City grandees advising the party as it crafts fresh policies before the next general election.
While Randell emphasises his lack of political leanings, his wealth of experience leaves him warning Labour to be prepared: “The key thing is to have a plan. Because once you get into power, events take over.”
CV
Age: 65
Family members: Wife Celia, three adult sons.
Education: Bradfield College in Berkshire, an undergraduate degree in law at Trinity. College Oxford, then solicitors exam at College of Law in Guildford.
Pay: Undisclosed.
Last holiday: Rented cottage in Cornwall.
Best advice you’ve been given: “Stuff happens, and it may not be your fault.”
Biggest career mistake: “Working too hard.”
Word you overuse: “Strategy.”
How you relax: Playing the guitar (“badly”), reading crime novels and walking.
