Ring fencing: The legal walling off of certain assets or liabilities within a corporation. (Source: Wall Street Words.) “It is usually legal, but there are limitations, such as maximum amounts that may be protected.” (Source: Farlex Financial Dictionary.) This metaphorical sense, which the OED traces back to 1870 (“I would not be sold, nor rounded off, nor ring-fenced”), was preceded by the literal sense of “surrounding (ringing) a piece of property with a fence to keep stock from escaping,” a usage that goes back in the UK to the 18th century. According to The Phrase Finder, which focuses on British usage, ring fencing “has been in use since the 1980s to denote the funds that are set aside for a project and cannot be spent on anything else.”
A more general sense of ring fencing, meaning “protection,” came up last week during the testimony of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, before the British Parliament. Brooks is quoted at 23:03 in this live blog by The FirstPost, an online British news daily:
Brooks said that she was “ring-fenced” from any investigation after her own voicemail was accessed in 2006. She did add, “I was on the editor, and it happened on my watch.”
And what is the purpose of exclusion in this and other cases? Deniability.
Posted by: Duchesse | July 25, 2011 at 05:00 PM