 The bank of England put a brave face on the Bingham report by

accepting its criticisms and recommendations and announcing a

new top-level appointment to investigate fraud.
 But Robin Leigh-Pemberton, the Governor, and Eddie George,
his deputy, dwelt mainly on Lord Justice Bingham's conclusions
that the
“present system of supervision has served the community
well”, that there was no need for a radical overhaul and that the
decision to shut BCCI was justified.
 It's asking too much of regulators to expect us to keep depositors
in a failsafe position. It's our job to reduce this risk to the very
minimum.
 The Bank's response paid rather less attention to the stream of
detailed criticisms of its handling of BCCI which are a constant
theme of the report and go back as far as 1980.
 The report says that in the past there has been too much
concentration on what the Bank cannot do under the Banking
Act.
 The Bank is also to do more extensive inspections of banks on
their own premises. It is strengthening its systems for internal
communication - criticised in the report, partly.
 There would be a series of amendments to the 1987 Banking Act,
most of which have already been canvassed publicly by the Bank.
 There will be measures to improve the effectiveness of the
Board of Banking Supervision, the group of senior figures
the report says were let down because they received
inadequate information.
 Price Waterhouse, auditor to BCCI, welcomed the report,
saying it revealed for the first time the part it played in
uncovering the fraud and disclosed the full extent of its
communications with the Bank over a long period.
 “Ian Brindle, senior partner, said: 'The Bingham report is
entirely consistent with the position maintained by Price
Waterhouse since July 1991 that as the facts emerged our
role would be vindicated, and that we would be shown to
have acted promptly, properly and professionally.”
 Sir Nicholas Goodison, president of the British Bankers
Association, welcomed the fact that there was nothing in
the report that would justify taking banking supervision
away from the Bank.
 A Luxembourg court cleared the way for a compensation
package to be put to BCCI creditors. The package includes a
contribution of dollars 1.2bn to dollars 2.2bn from Abu
Dhabi.