November 10th, 2009 One of the great unanswered questions about Lloyds TSB’s rescue takeover of HBOS which, despite the claims made in the above video, is the extent to which the Lloyds board was ‘hoodwinked’ by the board of HBOS. During the heated talks in the Halifax company flat in St James on September 16th-18th [...]
November 9th, 2009 John Angus Morrison has bitten the bullet and said what alot of us are thinking about the proposed capital-raisings from Lloyds Banking Group and RBS. John Angus, a risk-management expert at Brussels-based Asymptotix Risk, believes both the monster cash calls are “seriously bonkers”. There is so much uncertainty involved (not least because [...]
November 8th, 2009 (first published January 2009) “No touch” regulator? John Tiner was the FSA’s boss from April 2001 to July 2007 One of the FSA’s roles is supposed to be to protect consumers from being ripped off by crooks and charlatans in the financial world. But the City regulator has in recent times had [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: November 8th, 2009 The way some newspapers presented it, one might have thought that last Tuesday’s bank bail-out measures were a glorious victory. Plucky British bankers and politicians had taken on Neelie Kroes and those meddling bureaucrats of Brussels and won, ensuring that great British institutions such as [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Independent on Sunday Date: November 8th, 2009 Just four months before its humiliating collapse into the arms of Lloyds, the bank’s chairman assured shareholders that it had sufficient funds for at least a year. How could he have got it so wrong? Ian Fraser reports Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, the chairman [...]
By Ian Fraser and Margareta Pagano Published: Independent on Sunday Date: November 8th, 2009 A Financial Services Authority investigation into whether HBOS’s former board may have misled investors at the time of the bank’s abortive £4bn rights issue last year could “open the floodgates” to hundreds of civil court actions against Lloyds Banking Group, which [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Financial Times Date: November 4th, 2009 The crisis at Scotland’s two largest banks last October has cast a long shadow over the country’s commercial property market and clipped the wings of several of its best-known property entrepreneurs. Ten subsidiaries of Jonathan Milne’s over-extended FM development group have been put into [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Financial Times Date: November 4th, 2009 Scotland’s professional services firms have suffered real pain prompted by the near-collapse of its two biggest banks, the shift in their centre of gravity to London, the continuing loss of corporate headquarters and the slump in commercial property and M&A deals. Firms are generally reporting [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Financial Times Date: November 9th, 2009 Scotland may be separated from Shanghai by 5,000 miles but this has not prevented the nation’s universities from emerging as a favoured destination for Chinese post-graduate students. Already some 5,000 Chinese students are studying at Scotland’s 14 universities and the numbers are expected to increase [...]
November 3rd, 2009 Paul Moore, the whistleblower who was personally fired by HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby for raising red flags about the bank’s sales-mad culture, appeared on Channel 4 News earlier this evening. Moore, whose testimony provided welcome relief from the disingenuous claptrap we heard from guilty bank bosses during the Treasury select [...]