By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald August 28th, 2005 HBOS has been challenged to explain its approach towards recruitment and lending in Ireland – north and south of the border – by the the Northern Irish peer Lord Laird following revelations about the ex-chairman of its Irish arm. Phil Flynn was chairman of Bank of Scotland’s [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: August 28th, 2005 THE biggest surprise as the nuclear physicist turned fund manager Walter Scott guides you round his new office on Charlotte Square is not the architecture. It is the impressive collection of scale model Ferraris that the 58-year-old fund manager has in his corner office over [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: August 21, 2005 IT was strangely appropriate that Sir Fred Goodwin referred to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s acquisition of a 10% stake in the Bank of China as a “ticket to the game”. But the game in which he has become involved is quite different from the [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald August 21st, 2005 INSURANCE companies are so obsessed with mopping up new business in the run-up to “pensions simplification” next April that they are treating many existing customers unfairly, according to pensions experts. Some insurers are using simplification – which rewrites the rules on the taxation of UK pensions from [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald August 21st, 2005 It’s the silly season but RBS executives are certain their plunge into eastern markets makes good business sense IT was a great leap forward for Fred Goodwin. Talks with the Bank of China had been tortuous and on and off since February 2004. But the 47-year-old Paisley-born [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald August 14th, 2005 The price of crude is rocketing, but is a looming world shortage behind the hike or a shrewd PR trick by the moneymen? By Ian Fraser, Financial Editor AS the futures traders sat huddled in front of their flickering terminals on the Singaporean trading floor, they were [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald August 14th, 2005 BULK buying by speculators and concern over further refinery problems in the US will push the oil price through the $75-per-barrel barrier by the year end, Deutsche Bank economists have warned. Crude oil prices rose to a record on Friday for a fifth straight day, reaching $67 [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald August 7th, 2005 A SMALL Skye-based whisky company is taking on the might of the Scotch Whisky Association by accusing its “self-appointed” arbiters of putting together whisky category definitions that are likely to jeopardise the future growth of the sector. In an echo of the Cardhu debacle of November 2003, [...]