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LONDON, April 2 (Reuters) - Britain's top banking supervisorsaid on Wednesday he wants most of a banker's bonus deferred forlonger than the current average of three years.
"I would like to see deferral increased," Andrew Bailey,Bank of England Deputy Governor and chief executive of itsPrudential Regulation Authority, told Britain's ITV News.
The current average deferral period is three years, he said,and a parliamentary commission on banking standards has calledfor deferral of up to a decade.
Bailey said he would probably like a period "somewhere inbetween", which would suggest five to seven years.
A decade could be too long, he said.
"You've got to balance that against what might be a rathercommon sense argument about what is the expected length ofpeople's working lives. Frankly, I'm not in the business ofdeferring for a long time into retirement, and we just need tothink about that question," Bailey said.
The central bank is expected to launch a public consultationon deferring bonuses later in the year.
(Reporting by Huw Jones and Andy Bruce, editing by SteveSlater)
