By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: April 26th, 2009 Economists and business lobby groups have traditionally had a love-hate relationship with Scotland’s bloated public sector. Most of the time, and especially during economic upswings, they see it as an unproductive dead weight on the economy — largely because they believe the job security [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: April 26th, 2009 Closed for business? image courtesy of Urban 75 Many of our native breed of economists have a tendency to be insular. They often obsess about minor changes in the performance of different sectors of the Scottish economy and have an infuriating habit of banging [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: April 26th, 2009 An accountant from the bank’s insurance arm says there was a woeful lack of supervision HBOS under former chief executive Sir James Crosby was “dangerously out of control” with a sloppy attitude towards expenses and financial supervision, according to a whistleblower who was sacked [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: April 26th, 2009 Azeem Ibrahim argues against the government’s nationalisation of banks A Glasgow-based banking and insurance entrepreneur has said the British government’s “Zimbabwe-style” approach to fighting recession will lead to years of poor economic performance. Azeem Ibrahim, the chief executive of United Arab Emirates-based ECM Bank [...]
April 25th, 2009 THE slide in Dubai’s residential property market has only just begun and any investor considering investing in in bricks and mortar there would be well-advised to steer clear for now, according to the latest research from Swiss-owned investment bank UBS. The investment bank predicts that, from peak to trough, the emirate’s dysfunctional [...]
April 24th, 2009 The Bloomberg News columnist Matthew Lynn believes that the UK’s nationalised and part-nationalised banks – which include the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group (including HBOS), Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley – will remain in state-ownership for at least a decade. He said: “No government will dare privatise those banks until [...]
April 22nd, 2009 It’s all too easy for apologists for Sir Fred Goodwin and his ilk to claim that the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive was only doing what other bank chief executives were doing at the time – or to feel dismayed at the way he has become the victim of a [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Business Herald Date: April 2009 Inside track: Firms with a balanced portfolio will feel less pain when redundancy looms AS a country, Scotland is often described as being “over-lawyered”. The preponderance is all very well in the boom times but during a severe slowdown like the one we are currently [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: April 19th, 2009 Offshore wind farms may be solutions to Scotland’s looming energy gap. Image courtesy of Carbon Commentary. Ed Miliband desperately wants to persuade Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, to learn to stop worrying and love the . . . well, not the bomb but nuclear [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: April 19th, 2009 Oil industry bosses are urging Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, to ease the tax burden on North Sea oil and gas companies or risk more than 50,000 job losses in the industry, centred on Aberdeen. Sir Ian Wood, chairman of Wood Group, [...]