October 31st, 2009 Since Lloyds Banking Group seems to be incapable of telling us the truth about its agenda for Rangers F.C., the other troubled companies in Sir David Murray’s rapidly disintegrating empire, or indeed anything else at the moment, here’s a satirical interpretation of what the bank’s spin doctors really meant with their recent press [...]
Updated October 29th, 2009 (first published October 9th, 2009) Lloyds Banking Group has been given the go-ahead to proceed with a £13.5bn rights issue as part of a wider capital-raising. Given their knowledge of the extent of the challenges facing the bank, were the tripartite authorities (the FSA, Bank of England and H.M. Treasury) well-advised [...]
October 26th, 2009 It was fitting that Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, should have chosen Edinburgh to deliver his recent attack on bankers and to chastise the government for its failure to push for reform in the financial sector. After all, two of the UK’s worst-managed and most reckless banks — and [...]
October 15th, 2009 Despite their carefully choreographed performance at the Treasury Select Committee in February the “unfab four” (pictured above), didn’t actually apologize or display any contrition for anything they had done. According to new research from the consumers’ association Which?, this is the nub of the problem. The banks have no chance of regaining [...]
October 12th, 2009 Private equity boss Jon Moulton, who quit Alchemy Partners amid some controversy last month, has provided a unique insight into what went wrong with the banks from about 2005 onwards. Moulton (pictured above) said: “I was a critic of the immense levels of debt people were using too early. I first had [...]
October 10th, 2009 How effective has the Treasury Select Committee, chaired by John McFall MP for the past ten years, been in holding the government and the Financial Services Authority to account? Not very, according to Graham Senior-Milne, a former auditor and whistleblower at Scottish Widows and Lloyds TSB, who alerted his employer, the authorities [...]
By Ian Fraser in Doha (Originally published on Qfinance blog Oct 1st 2009) Springing out of the desert: Doha’s West Bay financial district barely existed in 2001 A new era has dawned for financial services, in which Gulf financial centers are well placed to demonstrate their virtues and fully compete with Western centres. These are [...]
By Ian Fraser in Doha (Originally published on Qfinance blog Oct 1st 2009) Gulf nations will have to become less rigidly hierarchical if they are going to boost entrepreneurialism and attract and retain overseas talent, according to speakers at the Doha Business Roundtable. Linda Hill, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, one of [...]
By Ian Fraser in Doha (Originally published on Qfinance blog Oct 1st, 2009) It is wrong to blame fair-value accounting, also known as mark-to-market accounting, for causing the financial crisis that last year nearly tipped the global economy over the edge, according to the chairman of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Gerald Corrigan. Also a managing [...]
By Ian Fraser in Doha (Originally published on Qfinance blog, Oct 1st, 2009) Protectionism has become the “crack cocaine” of modern politics and anti-globalization forces have been emboldened by the global downturn, according to Mike Moore, the former prime minister of New Zealand. Speaking at the opening of the Doha Business Roundtable, “Gulf 2020: Scenario [...]