Johnson: US jealous of London’s financial hub

London mayor Boris Johnson has accused US regulators of acting in a “high-handed” way over Standard Chartered, and said criticism of British banks stems from envy of London as a financial centre.

The US “is still the land of the free and the home of the brave and, every now and then, just a tiny bit high-handed in her treatment of other nations”, Johnson wrote in a column for the Spectator magazine, due to be published today.

“I mean, what is all this stuff about Standard Chartered? This British bank has generally enjoyed a high reputation for probity [as these places go] until yesterday, when some New York regulator apparently denounced Standard as a ‘rogue institution’,” Johnson wrote.