The UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA) will hire an extra 100 supervisory staff to monitor its biggest banks as it seeks to avoid another Northern Rock-style banking collapse, the Telegraph reported on Sunday. The move will be announced this week when the regulator publishes an internal investigation into its handling of events at Northern Rock, it said. The FSA was not immediately available for comment. Wednesday's report may also include recommendations on how to better supervise banks, the FSA said on Friday. Britain's fifth-biggest mortgage lender was the country's biggest casualty of the global credit crisis, when its over-reliance on wholesale market funds left it unable to borrow money when credit markets froze, prompting the first run on the deposits of a major British bank for over 140 years. The newspaper said the new staff will be deployed across the risk, analysis and supervisory departments of the FSA. The recruitment drive will bring in the equivalent of one supervisor for each of the 100 biggest ‘high category' institutions the FSA is charged with monitoring, including the largest high street and investment banks, the paper added. The FSA has since September shaken up its management, with several supervisors, including one of the top regulators in charge of the mortgage bank, set to leave. It has also beefed up its supervision of banks and created a specific role to monitor financial stability. __
