RISK MANAGEMENT ROUND TABLE
u at the responses. The fact that the SRA is
looking at how firms are regulated beyond Dover is welcomed – to a degree. Whitney, as a former employee of the SRA and now risk manager at an international firm, has a particular interest in this. He has read responses to the consultation from the Law Society and the City of London Law Society, and says there appears to be a lot of support for the general concept of enterprise regulation for the international firms. ‘That would certainly simplify my job and would simplify risk and compliance for a lot of people,’ he says. ‘But I think there are a number of caveats that go with that, primarily that the detail of the blueprint has not been properly thought through and there are likely to be difficulties trying to operate it. The concept is that there will be principle-based regulation for those parts of an enterprise outside of England and Wales,
‘There does not seem to be an enormous and immediate motivation to do anything too quickly.’ Tony Cherry, DAC Beachcroft
but it is difficult to decouple principles from the outcomes. So I think the message that has gone back is, “Look, we like the big picture, but do some more work about what this will mean in practice, because we are not convinced that in its current state it is workable”.’ He adds that other suggestions of alternatives to using the SRA’s principles include moving towards some globally accepted standards that could apply to the non-England and Wales businesses that are not associated with outcomes. Martin Bakes is a partner at international firm Herbert Smith and sees the need for some cross-border standardisation. ‘We just need the present position to be clarified because at the moment the regulatory position in terms of how you structure yourselves and where you do business is very complicated,’ he says. ‘So it would be good for that to be sorted out.’ Reed Smith is another large global firm and George Brown warns against comparing
54 Legal Business May 2012
LB224 p44-55 Risk round table.in54 54
23/4/12 17:39:31