Bank chiefs to Reeves: Ditch ring-fencing to boost UK economy

The bosses of four of Britain's biggest banks are secretly urging the chancellor to ditch the most significant regulatory change imposed after the 2008 financial crisis, warning her its continued imposition is inhibiting UK economic growth.Sky News has obtained an explosive letter sent this week by the chief executives of HSBC Holdings, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK in which they argue bank ring-fencing "is not only a drag on banks' ability to support business and the economy, but is now redundant". The CEOs' letter represents an unprecedented intervention by most of the UK's major lenders to abolish a reform which cost them billions of pounds to implement and which was designed to make the banking system safer by separating groups' high street retail operations from their riskier wholesale and investment banking activities.Their request to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to abandon ring-fencing 15 years after it was conceived will be seen as a direct challenge to...