The Federal Government has settled on a person to head up the impending royal commission into the HIH collapse, and will probably name him within days.

The terms of reference for the inquiry will be announced at the same time.

PM John Howard said on Friday that the inquiry will be wide-ranging, and denied he is going slow on sorting out the details.

It’s understood ASIC has won its battle to continue its own inquiry into the collapse, probably because the regulator has the ability to concentrate its efforts on the activities of individuals and secure relatively swift action. The royal commission is expected to take quite a bit longer, and concentrate more on the mechanisms and events that led to the collapse, as well as the procedures adopted by APRA.

APRA chiefs are at present experiencing a rigorous line of questioning that may be good practice for the QCs they’ll face at the royal commission. Labor senators used a Senate investigating committee to grill APRA CEO Graeme Thompson and senior official Tom Karp about the regulator’s alleged lack of action in the months before the HIH collapse. According to the Australian Financial Review, the senators learned that APRA was concerned about FAI when it was bought by HIH in January 1999. Also, APRA had concerns about HIH in the months leading up to its collapse, but never asked to see the company’s actuarial reports.

Another Senate committee is taking up the case with APRA this week.