House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank cited comments from Britain's top regulator to back up his own belief in the need for stronger regulation of financial services.

Frank wrote a letter to his colleagues and noted that Adair Turner, the head of Britain's Financial Services Authority. had recently said that "the days of light touch regulation are over."

Frank used Turner's comments to refute criticisms that stronger regulations-including limits on executive compensation--would place American firms at a competitive disadvantage against their European counterparts.

"In fact, compensation for executives in America have been far greater than those for comparable institutions elsewhere in most cases, and even more important, there is now a movement underway among our most serious competitors for financial business to tighten the compensation standards that apply in their countries-which are, as I said, already generally lower than those in the U.S," he wrote.