Pay bankers in debt, Andy Haldane says "Equity can give strange incentives to management" when a firm is "at death's door," Mr Haldane said yesterday at an event arranged by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in Georgia. In the crisis, many big firms gambled for their resurrection when, if you look at how top management was remunerated, it was heavily in equity. Using bail-in bonds and cocos, which can be wiped out if a bank is at risk of going bust, could incentivise management to have a "remedial plan before they are triggered," Mr Haldane said. Financial regulations are too complex and a "radical pruning" is needed to prevent banks and other institutions from finding ways around them, he said. We have created a system with Byzantine levels of complexity. It's near impossible to create a level playing field. "Complex frameworks if anything are easier to arbitrage, easier to game," he said. He proposed three rules - a leverage ratio "set at levels north, possibly well north, of those prescribed in international regulation," a restructuring rule that "compels you to organize your business in such a way" that it can be wound down simply, "and thirdly a resolution rule which effects the restructuring of your business" if needed. "Have those rules and in return for that we back off," he said. We won't plant 50 bank examiners in your shop. We will leave you to run your own business.