Tories set for clash with EU on banking laws

"In this whole area of financial services, UK-EU relations could blow up," according to Philip Whyte, a UK-based analyst from the Centre for European reform. … "The Lib Dems will likely try to reign in Euroscepticism coming from their Conservative partners but they will not be shaping the UK's EU policy." Whyte also points out that the Tory electorate is still smarting from the fact that they did not have a referendum on the EU's Lisbon Treaty last year, serving to fuel their hostility to the bloc even more. … Though the Conservatives are unlikely to resist policies that tighten up the co-ordination of supervising the EU's big banks, "[they] will be neuralgic about anything that smacks of a transfer of power from the Financial Services Authority (the UK regulator) to Brussels or in this case Frankfurt," he added. … "It's not that we love hedge funds, but there is a widespread perception in the UK that this is a political directive targeting the wrong entities and that it will do damage to non-systemically relevant entities like investment trusts."