Leading company lawyers at the sharp end of Financial Services Authority (FSA) policing have backed the controversial City watchdog, with more than twothirds of corporate counsel branding the FSA an ‘effective’ regulator.

Seventy-one percent of the 100 corporate counsel who took part in the Legal Week Benchmarker survey on financial services regulation described the FSA as an ‘effective’ regulator, while a fifth (20%) said it was ‘highly effective’.