EU Should Reconsider Bank Trading Rules, SocGen Chairman Says

The European Union should consider whether tough new rules for banks’ trading operations are still warranted given the region wants to expand its capital markets, according to the chairman of one of the bloc’s largest securities firms.

“I wonder whether the regulators shouldn’t give a new look at it whether it makes sense for Europe to approve this regulation,” Societe Generale SA Chairman Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Wednesday. He called the new standards, known as the fundamental review of the trading book, “penalizing.”