The fallout from Chancellor George Osborne's impetuous decision to abolish the Financial Services Authority continues to cause problems.
Finding a home for the UK Listings Authority is proving particularly contentious, though the Government reaffirmed yesterday that it thinks it should be put with the Financial Reporting Council.
The Stock Exchange disagrees strongly, but then the Stock Exchange does have a commercial interest in having the listing authority housed somewhere it can influence if not occasionally intimidate.
The FRC does not meet that brief. Interestingly, the investing institutions, who are the people with most at stake in the outcome given that they buy the securities once they have been listed, seem to have no public opinion on the matter.
Given the outcome matters, theirs is an oddly passive attitude.
Where the Stock Exchange does have a powerful point is in worrying how the listings authority will get its voice heard in Europe, just at the moment when the EU is flexing its corporate governance muscles.
This is potentially the biggest Osborne-induced failing, because not only the listings authority but the FRC and the Takeover Panel will all find themselves deprived of a direct route to Brussels.
They will have to rely on second-hand lobbying — and some agency with no feel for their activities fighting their corner.
It will be no surprise if the unintended consequence of this largely unnecessary upheaval is once again to put us firmly on the back foot in Brussels.
