Ms Bowe doesn't want a place in the new empire

Whether the new system will work is anyone's guess. About the only model for such a broad-brush, monolithic approach to financial services regulation is Scandinavia, whose record of banking collapses is about as bad as they come

It was perhaps always inevitable that at least some of the crown princes and princesses who run the City's oddball collection of regulatory fiefdoms would fail to find a place in the new, all embracing, regulatory super empire being set up under the leadership of Howard Davies. If you've been used to running your own show, being a lieutenant, albeit in a larger organisation, just ain't the same. Egos were bound to get sorely bruised, whatever Mr Davies decided to do.

As it is, Mr Davies has opted to reorganise the way the City is regulated along radically different lines. Out goes the old vertical structures under which regulators were responsible for whole sectors of the City, through authorisation to enforcement, and in comes a more horizontal approach, with regulators taking charge of particular functions across the full range of the financial services industry. Mr Davies intends to have three, possibly four, individuals reporting directly to him, but they won't, as might have been presumed, broadly mirror the three or four top regulatory and supervisory jobs as they presently exist.

Instead, there will be a chief executive to manage the SuperSib, a regulator to handle all supervision across the banking, securities and investment management industries, and a separate person to handle authorisation and enforcement, again across the board. There may be a third regulatory position, but this hasn't yet been decided.

Whether it will work is anyone's guess. About the only model for such a broad brush, monolithic approach to financial services regulation is Scandinavia, whose record of banking collapses is about as bad as they come. However, that's not the reason Colette Bowe decided to throw in the towel. She's not resigning from the PIA because she doesn't think the new SuperSib will work, or not that she's saying anyway, but because she didn't fancy any of the new jobs.

It is not clear, of course, that she was ever going to be offered any of them. Her record at the PIA has been at best mixed, and although she cannot in any way be blamed personally for the fiasco of pensions mis- selling, there is no getting away from the fact that she does run the regulator that was meant to be sorting it out. That was never going to look good on the job application. When it's Helen Liddell who is vetting the CVs, it was perhaps understandable that Ms Bowe decided that discretion was the better part of valour and opted not to apply at all. The new Economic Secretary to the Treasury has been privately highly critical of the way regulators have handled the mis-selling compensation.

Other senior regulators - Michael Foot from supervision at the Bank of England, Phillip Thorpe, chief executive of Imro, and Richard Farrant, chief executive of the Securities and Futures Authority - have applied. We'll know next week whether Mr Davies has decided to accommodate all or any of them. Given the months, and possibly years, of hard work and turmoil involved in getting the new SuperSib to fly, it could well be that Ms Bowe has made the right choice.