LONDON, April 4 (Reuters) - The Bank of England said on Tuesday it was censuring Wyelands Bank Plc - part of the Gupta Family Group (GFG) Alliance - for what it said were "wide-ranging significant regulatory failures" between December 2016 and May 2020.
Wyelands was part of Sanjeev Gupta's metals-to-finance GFG empire and was the largest client of Greensill Capital, the financing company that went bust in 2021 after one of its main insurers declined to renew its cover.
Wyelands said it cooperated extensively with the BoE's investigation and welcomed the matter being drawn to a close.
"The bank is currently in an inactive state, and the board continues to work to successfully complete the final stages of its solvent wind down process," Wyelands said.
A GFG spokesperson said GFG injected significant funding into Wyelands so that all depositors were repaid in full, and to allow the bank to conclude its solvent wind down.
The BoE's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which regulates banks, said the breaches related to limits on large exposures, capital reporting, governance, risk controls and poor retention of WhatsApp messages.
The PRA said it was the first time it has taken action against a breach of large exposure limit, a rule designed to stop a company from being overly exposed to a single counterparty.
"Wyelands entered into several complex structured finance transactions which were introduced to it by GFG. These transactions were significantly in excess of regulatory limits on large exposures, but Wyelands did not identify this and report it to the PRA," the BoE said in a statement.
The BoE said that under normal circumstances it would have fined the bank 8.5 million pounds ($10.6 million), but would not do so given the bank was being wound down and had very limited financial resources.
In March 2021, the PRA required Wyelands to repay its depositors, which has been done, the PRA said.
Wyelands said it repaid depositors by May 2021.
($1 = 0.8018 pounds)
