American Express Bank

EDM number 172 in 1993-94, proposed by Austin Mitchell on 03/12/1993.

That this House, concerned over the inadequate regulatory supervision of currency and other fund management, which allows institutions like American Express Bank to require its fund managers, as with their AEB International Currency Fund and their Discretionary Management Programme, to do their dealing in-house, putting fund managers at the mercy of the bank's own spot dealers who can use their monopoly position to skim points (money) from fund managers's transactions for the benefit of the bank at the expense of the fund's customers, a conflict of interest which is never explained to these non-professional investors whose assets are exposed to possible churning, skimming and misappropriation, further concerned that the Bank of England, as of yet, has failed to conduct a full investigation and thus far declines to consider any separation of fund management and dealing activities to guarantee open market access and fair deals for clients, urges Her Majesty's Government to introduce such a split, with improved audit trails, and recognise that business is best brought to London by protecting consumers and the financial system's integrity, not by lax regulation allowing powerful financial institutions to dupe their clients.

This motion has been signed by a total of 79 MPs.