Dame Clara Furse, the former chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, will join the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee (FPC) despite reservations over her appointment from Parliament.
The powerful Treasury Select Committee of MPs has approved Dame Clara's appointment only after expressing "serious concerns" over two issues on which the committee cross-examined her on Tuesday.
The committee said yesterday its concerns related to her awareness of the importance of asserting the independence of the FPC, and her "explanation of her role on the board of Fortis in relation to the purchase of part of ABN Amro and Fortis's subsequent bailout" and the lessons "she had learnt from that experience". It went on: "With these reservations, we have concluded that Dame Clara Furse has the professional competence and personal independence to be an external member of the FPC. We wish her every success in her new role."
The committee also approved, without reservations, the appointments of former Barclays chief executive Martin Taylor and former Goldman Sachs executive Richard Sharp.
At Tuesday's hearing, Dame Clara admitted she was unaware of press speculation that her appointment might be seen as "Treasury-friendly", and had not responded fully on the issue of her independence, saying only "of course I will be independent".
On her time at Fortis, the Belgian bank which became embroiled alongside RBS in the deal to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro, Dame Clara told MPs it had "sensitised me to all sorts of extreme risks in a way that I think might be quite useful".
Committee chair Andrew Tyrie MP told her that MPs wanted to "make sure you will not bring the same misjudgments, which the board of Fortis and others appear to have made at that time, to your current job".
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