May 28th, 2010 Remember those Beyond Petroleum ads in which oil company BP sought to convince us that it was serious about moving away from fossil fuels and towards alternative energy sources? Well here’s the latest in the series, shedding further light on the London-based energy group’s transformation from being a polluter into a champion [...]
May 27th, 2010 It is astonishing that none of the bank executives who defrauded their own banks for personal gain before nearly bringing down the entire financial system have yet been prosecuted — and that many are still working in the financial sector. Before the crisis, the authorities turned a blind eye to “control fraud” [...]
May 25th, 2010 Reality check for the west. A mega crash looms but this time the policymakers’ cupboard is bare. The “super bubble” inflated by decades of profligacy, over-leverage and delusional macroeconomic thinking by governments in the developed world and by an excess of irresponsible “no questions asked” lending by creditor nations, including China, looks [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: May 23rd, 2010 Investors say they lost £20m when assets were not frozen. By Ian Fraser IT was a scene that could have been straight from the pages of a John Grisham novel. When officers from the Financial Services Authority landed unannounced at the Edinburgh headquarters of [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: May 9th, 2010 The tycoon, whose wealth has shrunk, tells Ian Fraser he has made mistakes but is bullish on the future Sir David Murray is bloodied but not unbowed. He cannot disguise the fact that the past year has been a disaster for him. He was [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: May 9th, 2010 SIR WIN BISCHOFF, chairman of Lloyds Banking Group, which is 41% owned by the British state, has said governments and regulators should get their skates on and commit to a unified approach on the regulation of banks and financial institutions, rather than pursuing a [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: May 9th, 2010 The Labour government’s laissez-faire approach to executive pay was to assume the market’s hidden hand would do its work. From the days of Patricia Hewitt’s tenure in the DTI, Labour saw no reason to intervene. The assumption was that it was in the interests [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: BBC News website Date: May 6th, 2010 Lloyds Banking Group has been warned Rangers fans will boycott it unless it continues to support the troubled club. Recent accounts showed the club had a £31m debt with the bank, and this has been blamed for a lack of activity in the transfer [...]
May 5th, 2010 The torrent of speculation surrounding the SEC’s chances of succeeding with its attempts to nail the “giant vampire squid” (a.k.a. Goldman Sachs) over alleged fraudulence in its Abacus 2007-AC1 CDO seems to have obscured the true import of what happened last Friday. For Goldman Sachs, traditionally the most successful and powerful investment [...]
By Ian Fraser & Jason Allardyce Published: The Sunday Times Date: May 2nd, 2010 David Cameron has received a boost in Scotland ahead of the election from Sir David Murray, the Rangers owner, who said he believed the Conservatives offered the best hope for the country’s long term future. The founder and owner of Murray [...]