国际英语新闻：New British finance secretary looks set to reform finance authority

LONDON, June 3 (Xinhua) -- New British chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne looks set to announce this month radical changes in the regulation of the financial sector which would see greater powers given to the country's central bank, according to a report of the Guardian on Thursday.

The paper quoted government sources as saying that Osborne would use a speech in the middle of the month to announce extended powers for the Bank of England (BoE), Britain's central bank, which would be shifted from the current regulatory body the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

The paper's report was bolstered on Thursday evening by a speech in Belgium by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury Mark Hoban who confirmed that the BoE was likely to get more powers.

Hoban said: "To improve the regulation and supervision of the sector we will give control of macro prudential regulation, with oversight powers of micro decisions, to the Bank of England. "This will enable better monitoring of systemic risk and more effective regulatory interventions with an eye to not just individual firms, but sectors and markets as a whole."

Supervision of banks had been part of the BoE's remit until 1997 when the then incoming chancellor Gordon Brown removed those duties.

The desire to return them to the BoE comes in the wake of the financial crisis, to which Britain was more exposed than other nations because of the strong role the finance sector plays in the national economy.