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The SRA has failed to do its job and should be shut down. The entire regulatory framework for legal services should also be subject to an urgent review by the Justice Minister. Consider the following : from April 2014, the Financial Times has run a column and blog entitled FT Alphaville. For almost two years, they examined the curious development of Quindell and the odd speculation in its shares. The column has had around sixty articles, nearly all of which were critical of Quindell and latterly of Slater & Gordon who were both in discussions over a year ago. The FT came in for quite a lot of unfounded criticism from investors who refused to believe that the publicly available information analysed by the FT about Quindell was credible. On 18 November 2014, the FT wrote an article headed “Dear SRA : will you be ready if a large law firm fails ?” Answer came there none. Throughout all of last year, the continuing revelations produced by the FT were extremely worrying and required a response. Still, answer from the SRA came there none. Having taken an enormous amount of flak, the FT was absolutely correct and fully vindicated by the events it very accurately predicted. And the regulators ? One presumes they read the newspapers and are capable of reading financial accounts. And yet no action was taken. We are now in the situation where the FT’s unanswered letter of eighteen months ago still requires an answer. Will it ever be answered ? What is the point of a regulator which is more worried about the shillings and pence being lost in the counting (at small firms) when there is half a billion pounds lost (at a listed firm), along with hundreds of jobs, closure of offices and thousands of clients being put at risk ? Heads should roll.

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