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The Bank of England has fined the prominent English financier Jay Hambro for his conduct while a director of Wyelands Bank, the British lender owned by Sanjeev Gupta that collapsed in a scandal.
The BoE’s Prudential Regulation Authority said on Wednesday that it had fined Hambro £72,000 for conduct that “fell below the standards expected of a person in his position in an authorised firm and demonstrated a serious lack of due skill, care and diligence”.
Wyelands was part of Gupta’s GFG Alliance steel-to-finance conglomerate. At its peak, the bank gathered more than £700mn in deposits from savers but was ordered to return them in March 2021 when regulators became concerned about its financial condition.
Hambro, a scion of the well-known English banking dynasty, was GFG’s chief investment officer and sat on Wyelands Bank’s board as a representative of its shareholder between December 2016 and July 2021.
Sam Woods, chief executive of the PRA, said: “We have taken this action against Mr Hambro because his breaches and failings contributed to creating prudential risks which threatened the safety and soundness of Wyelands Bank.”
Jay Hambro separately issued an apology to the regulator on Wednesday.
“I had never been the director of a PRA-regulated entity prior to my appointment and now accept that I should have showed a greater level of assiduousness as a non-executive director,” he said.
“I think we can all learn a great deal from this process and I am pleased to conclude it constructively with this settlement.”
