Advisers pitied Sants over 'impossible job'

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It will come as little surprise to readers of IFAonline.co.uk that most of your peers believe Hector Sants, the former chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and now the highly-paid head of compliance at Barclays Bank, was misguided to believe his tenure at the regulator was a successful one.

But what may amaze some of you is that quite a few also believed his was an ‘impossible job' where success is difficult to gauge. According to the results of a poll on IFAonline.co.uk, which has been running for several months and which attracted more than 2,100 votes, a quarter of readers (546 people, or 25%) were sympathetic to the challenges Sants faced while at the helm of the FSA. Following his departure from the regulator, Sants, a former investment banker who joined the FSA in 2004, defended his tenure, arguing changes he made had left it "in good stead". "All the reports...

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