The City of London seems to be heading pell-mell for a rule-driven regulatory system despite the hopes still being uttered in some quarters that its traditions of light-touch supervision can somehow be preserved. Can anything be done to stop it?

The evidence is all around us: a rule book several feet thick and growing, a proliferating compliance profession now numbering thousands of people, practitioners fearful of trying anything new until the lawyers have been all over it, regulatory costs on the rise pretty much everywhere.