Two senior government officials should not be held politically accountable for the Lehman Brothers investment fiasco of 2008, the head of a legislature subcommittee on the issue said yesterday.
Dr Raymond Ho Chung-tai was responding to criticism of the two men - Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah and Secretary for Financial Services and Treasury Professor Chan Ka-keung - as his subcommittee report, issued this week, mentioned them.
'The criticisms [of the two men, in the report] were not heavy. They were the slightest [criticisms],' he said yesterday on a Commercial Radio programme.
The report, which said the city's mechanisms to supervise the banks' securities business had been largely ineffective, criticised Tsang and Chan for not initiating 'improvements to the regulatory framework' in the years before Lehman's collapse.
The report also said former Hong Kong Monetary Authority chief Joseph Yam Chi-kwong should bear the 'ultimate responsibility' for investors' losses over irregularities in Lehman's minibonds and structured financial products, as he was chief of the banking watchdog at the time.
Meanwhile, a former senior manager at the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) urged incoming chief executive Leung Chun-ying to review the compensation that should be paid to investors who lost money. The panel's report said it was unjust to exclude experienced investors from compensation.