King: We could have done more to avert banking crisis

Bank of England governor Mervyn King has admitted the central bank failed to warn of the risks banks were taking ahead of the crisis in 2008.

He also reiterated previous calls for banking reforms and urged measures outlined in the John Vickers' Independent Commission on Banking, such as ring-fencing of retail operations, to be implemented "sooner rather than later". The Bank of England should have done more to avert the crisis as repairing the economy has been "the biggest challenge the Bank has faced for decades", he said in a lecture for the BBC. "With the benefit of hindsight, we should have shouted from the rooftops that a system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too quickly ...