March 31st, 2010
I’ve just realised that the charming individuals at Aim-listed accountants Vantis have warned that their business recovery division is unlikely to generate the revenues they expected in the year to April 2010.
The distinctly dodgy and deeply troubled accountancy firm earlier warned that the litigation surrounding its appointment as liquidator to the (allegedly) fraudulent [...]
March 30th, 2010
TEN years after Don Cruickshank published his Review of Banking Services is a good time to take stock of Gordon Brown’s bizarre relationship with the banking fraternity.
Brown commissioned the report as chancellor in 1998 at a time when, true to his early Socialist principles, he remained deeply sceptical of banks and bankers.
Given what [...]
By ian Fraser
Published: Scotland on Sunday
Date: March 28th, 2010
THE era of commercial wave farms off Scotland’s coast has come a step closer following ScottishPower Renewables’ purchase of a second-generation “sea snake” device from Leith-based Pelamis.
The P2 Pelamis wave generator will be tested in the stormy seas off Orkney from summer 2011, with a view to [...]
March 26th, 2010
Three years after the crisis began is as good a time as any to take stock of the US policy response to the fallout from the subprime catastrophe—and assess the response’s effectiveness in nursing the world’s largest economy back to health.
One of the fiercest critics of recent US economic policy is the Nobel [...]
March 22nd, 2010
The former Salomon Brothers bond trader who lifted the lid on sharp practice in Wall Street with Liar’s Poker in 1989 has returned to his former stamping ground.
In his new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis focuses not on bulge-bracket banks but on a small band of wacky outsiders, [...]
March 18th, 2010
The time bombs detonated by the court-appointed examiner’s report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers have by no means all gone off. Indeed, further explosions are expected to continue to reverberate and echo around the financial and regulatory landscape for some years to come.
The report—a 2,200-page, nine-volume page-turner written by lawyer Anton Valukas—revealed [...]
March 17th, 2010
Calls for Vantis, one of the UK’s dodgiest and most troubled accountancy firms, to be removed as receiver to the collapsed business empire of alleged fraudster Sir Allen Stanford (pictured above) are reaching a crescendo.
Aim-listed Vantis is nearly bust — it only survives thanks to the generosity of state-owned banks RBS and Lloyds [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: The Times
Date: March 15th, 2010
The £955m sale of Pets at Home was a turning point for dealmaking; image from The Drum
Corporate treasurers are on the look out for imaginative but prudent ways of financing tactical and strategic acquisitions, writes Ian Fraser
During the credit crunch that commenced in July 2007 cash was [...]
March 15th, 2010
America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and its London-based counterpart, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), both privately-owned and self-regulatory bodies, have for decades been trusted with the task of setting the accountancy standards that represent the bedrock for truthful financial reporting worldwide.
In the light of the recent revelations about Lehman Brothers and [...]
March 12th, 2010
Picture: Uzar News Poland
Guess which taxpayer-owned banks in the UK are helping Trafigura — the oil trading company which illegally dumped 500 tonnes of hazardous waste, causing a public health emergency in the Ivory Coast — to raise millions of euros on the bond markets?
You guessed it. The taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland [...]