Recent research showed that more than half of financial services groups in the UKJ have poorly applied or no controls for managing business-critical spreadsheets, leaving them open to the problems that led to the $6bn trading losses at J.P. Morgan Chase's London office. About a fifth of executives said their companies have no control policy for spreadsheets, according to a survey by Vision Critical, a market research group.

An investigation by J.P. Morgan into the $6bn losses from trades by "London whale" showed that they were caused in part by avoidable errors in spreadsheets used to calculate risk. Nevertheless, only one in 10 executives said their company had automated controls in place, allowing them to see a clear audit trail of data, with the remainder relying on manual check to spot errors.

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