Recent events have shown the limitations of regulation. The FSA’s prohibition of short selling of financial stocks didn’t work. The banks’ share prices continued to fall.

To suggest the FSA has a light regulatory touch is frankly risible. Its rulebook is over 8,000 pages long. The FSA possesses every available tool — it just doesn’t necessarily use them appropriately. The fact that the global financial crisis is pandemic tells you more about market forces than regulatory weakness.

London has become the world’s leading financial centre because we have the appropriate regulatory touch. The FSA is a very effective regulator. Consumers do get an increasingly fair deal. Fundamentally, we won’t see things like mortgage endowment mis-selling, which was endemic in the past.

We want to avoid our own Sarbanes-Oxley. A knee-jerk reaction to Enron, it stifled innovation and corporate operations. We shouldn’t fall into another trap of more regulation. Sarbanes-Oxley was the greatest gift to the City of London — and we’d like another one please.

As a regulatory lawyer there’s always something interesting or new going on. There are always new products, regulatory innovations or some new problem. Regulation is often looking at things that haven’t happened before. Clients are constantly asking about next week’s product, which always makes things interesting.

I’m an immense optimist. There remains a strong consumer base in Europe, which is the most prosperous area in the world. All the innovators that were incubated at Lehman Brothers will set up new businesses. You only have to look at many of the leading hedge fund managers in London who went to the universities of Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan. When one door shuts many other doors open.

I come from a long line of doctors, but I can’t stand the sight of blood. I prefer cash on the carpet. My mother and father made it clear that I had to take up a profession. I wanted to be a coin collector, but I read law at Cambridge and then got a PhD in history.

My greatest pleasure is going into an archive, doing history research and then writing it up and getting it published. I’m currently writing about 19th-century turnpikes and toll bridges in London. I also like getting the bike out of the boot and peddling around London to find the few remaining Victorian or early 20th-century street signs. The old fashioned ones from the old boroughs are very different to modern street signs.

At Cambridge you are left to your own devices. Nobody spoon-feeds you. It certainly taught me the importance of studying all the FSA source books. You can’t rely on people to do it for you.

I like to win the fight for the underdog. When you are acting for the regulated firm, even the biggest bank is the underdog. It’s immensely satisfying, especially when the FSA is pushing them around.

Simon Morris is a partner specialising in financial services regulation at CMS Cameron McKenna

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