January 30th, 2009 The outlook for Dubai is getting grimmer by the day. While the country’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum is beginning to accept belt-tightening might be required, he remains out of touch with the enormity of the problems facing Dubai. The emirate’s economic woes and plummeting property market have already prompted thousands [...]
January 26th, 2009 The knives are out for Sir Fred Goodwin, the former CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland, who last year was officially named “the “world’s worst banker.” The latest developments include that the Liberal Democrat MSP, Tavish Scott has called for a serious fraud office inquiry into the bank’s £12 billion rights issue [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: January 25th, 2009 Call for probe into ‘favourable gloss’ on finances. By Ian Fraser A FORMER Bank of Scotland senior executive has called for a Financial Services Authority investigation into misleading information put out by the board of HBOS at the time of its ill-fated £4 billion rights [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: January 25th, 2009 Government hopes that its latest raft of measures would persuade banks to start lending to each other again – and thus kickstart the economy – seem, so far, unfounded. So why are institutions reluctant to throw the cash around … and what will it mean [...]
By Ian Fraser and Ben Laurance Published: The Daily Mail Date: January 24th, 2009 BANKERS who engineered the catastrophic takeover deal that brought Royal Bank of Scotland to its knees have received multi-million-pound bonuses for the disastrous transaction, it has emerged. The man who led the team advising RBS in spearheading a £50 billion takeover [...]
January 23rd, 2009 The clutch of investment bankers who advised Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander and Fortis on their joint €71bn three-way takeover of ABN Amro in 2007 have recently received vast bonuses for their part in the deal — even though it ended up destroying most of the banks involved. Merrill Lynch put [...]
January 20th, 2008 Oh dear. Gordon Brown’s stewardship of the economy has not been quite as wonderful as he would have us believe. In fact he has left Britain as the second most indebted nation in the world, with a current account deficit of $72.5 billion. The only two countries in a worse fiscal position, [...]
January 17th, 2009 Image courtesy of Electric Scotland The Royal Bank of Scotland is being sued for fraud in the small claims court in Argyll. Ian Hamilton, an 83-year-old motorbike riding QC alleges that the bank fraudulently misrepresented its financial position at the time of its rights issue last year. The action will be watched [...]
January 15th, 2009 I’ve just heard that Royal Bank of Scotland is to be sued for misleading investors ahead of its £12 billion rights issue last year. This could be the first of several such actions by angry investors who believe that the state-owned bank, which was led by Sir Fred Goodwin until the government [...]
January 15th, 2009 An interesting spat between economists has erupted in the letters pages of the Financial Times. It started with a group of economists, including Tim Congdon of Capital Economics, writing a letter published on December 31st 2008 (Government must borrow from banks to create money). In this they made some counter-intuitive proposals, including [...]