By Andrew Hurst, European Banking Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial markets regulator, at full stretch dealing with fallout from a global credit squeeze, is anxious to attract higher caliber employees, a senior official at the watchdog said.
"We are operating with the team that we have. It is a high quality team. It is in our view doing the job," said Thomas Huertas, acting managing director of wholesale and institutional markets at the UK Financial Services Authority.
But, speaking at a Reuters Finance Summit on Wednesday, he added pointedly: "We can always use better quality people. We said we would like to have more quality people and any CVs you push in our direction would be most welcome."
The FSA, which with the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Ministry) form a "tripartite" financial regulatory regime, has been criticized for not forestalling a run on British lender Northern Rock NRK.L.
The agency's much-vaunted lightness of touch in applying a principles-based style of regulation rather than a rules-driven approach favored by watchdogs in some other countries has also come under fire in the aftermath of the Northern Rock affair.
Huertas has said the full lessons from the near-collapse of Northern Rock will not be clear until next year.
The FSA has been under pressure to trim its size while raising the quality of its staff to deal with the challenges posed by complex financial instruments and the fast growth in banks' commodities activities.
Asked if the FSA was operating at full stretch as a result of the liquidity crisis, in which many global banks have taken huge charges on their exposure to mortgage-backed securities after a meltdown in U.S. subprime loans, Huertas said: "Yes, it's fair to say that."
"We have business as usual to regulate and supervise 20,000 firms here in the UK and there is a huge amount of work on liquidity and capital and large exposures that have dramatically increased and our staff are stretched," he said.
Huertas praised the efforts of FSA staff to raise the tempo while the credit crisis plays itself out. "People have really stepped up in terms of responding to the turbulence," said Huertas.
Bankers and financial analysts say that regulators carry a heavy burden trying to monitor some of the structured financial products, which have borne the brunt of the subprime crisis, because of their sheer complexity.
Huertas said he believed some of the more exotic products that were in vogue until only a few months ago were unlikely to make a return when markets finally recovered.
He also said it was too early to talk about shaking up Britain's tripartite system of regulating banks.
(Reporting by Andrew Hurst; editing by Paul Bolding)
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