The Gower Report into investor protection proposed regulations for the financial services industry in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s.
The main regulatory legislation was the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act 1958 which was introduced in an attempt to provide a degree of consumer protection, but in itself did not go far enough as the scope was narrow and was frequently open to interpretation.
A number of factors, both positive and negative, forced the government to reconsider the way financial services were regulated in the UK.
These included a number of highly publicised scandals to hit the UK financial services sector in the '70s and '80s involving mis-selling of personal pension schemes, endowments and split capital investment trusts.
[1] His mandate was as follows:- Gower produced his report and the Government adopted a number of his proposals in a white paper (Jan 1985).