Financial Regulation in the United Kingdom: Historical Foundations and Current Practices

Financial markets have been developed rapidly in recent years. New and sophisticated financial tools have been the cause of these developments which need new controlling systems to prevent crisis. Most of industrial economies have reformed regulatory structure of their financial systems. This paper reviews the regulatory developments of UK in this regard and offers new regulations and accounting standards concerning financial activities. These regulations have undergone significant structural financial reforms over the past three decades principally aimed at changing the architecture of the financial sector and encouraging greater competition. These reforms offer a unique setting to explore empirical evidence from experiments with competing theories of regulation; that is, studying the real world challenges and the pros and cons of self-regulation on the one hand and state intervention and public regulation on the other. One of important issues considered here is the contagious effects of crises from sector to sector, and from country to country which should be prevented by new effective regulations. Monitoring financial firms and their scale and domain of economic activities can prevent or reduce this domino effect.