By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 2nd, 2012 Financial commentators are, suddenly, in demand and it’s largely down to the continuing failure of banks to properly reform themselves in the wake of the global financial crisis and the current public rage about bankers who continue to award themselves massive pay packages even though their [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 1st, 2012 The Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett (pictured above playing the ukelele) once famously quipped that a hedge fund is a “compensation scheme masquerading as an asset class”. The remark, a reference to the fact that many hedge funds provide investors with feeble returns whilst massively enriching intermediaries (the hedge fund [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: January 15th, 2012 Eamonn Rice struck off by ICAS for professional misconduct One of Scotland’s highest-profile chartered accountants has described as “excessive” the ruling that led to his being struck off by the professional body, the ICAS. Eamonn Rice, a former partner and head of financial services at [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 18th, 2011 One of Fred Goodwin’s first acts on being appointed RBS’s chief executive in 2000 was to sack PWC as auditors and to wheel in his ‘alma mater’, Deloitte. Ex-insiders suggest this was because Goodwin believed that Deloitte – where he cut his teeth in the [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 18th, 2011 KPMG was already auditing Halifax when the ex-building society merged with the Bank of Scotland a decade ago, and the audit firm took over responsibility for checking the HBOS books from September 2001. The firm fulfilled this function until HBOS had to be rescued via [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: December 5th, 2011 Ever since its failures as a regulator first became widely apparent with the collapse of Northern Rock in September 2007, the UK’s Financial Services Authority has shown a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for rooting out financial crime, and very little introspection or contrition about its own pre-crisis performance. The reported [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: December 1st, 2011 The bizarre contortions that the Church of England got itself into over the protesters who are camping outside St Paul’s Cathedral are nothing when compared to the tortured mindsets of many of those who work in the City of London. The survey Value and Values: Perceptions of [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: November 27th, 2011 Picture: courtesy of eFinancialNews Asset managers lose patience over £500,000 unpaid bill Lloyds Banking Group, whose shares tumbled last week on investor concern that it is in “chaos”, is being sued by an Aim-listed fund management company in which it owns a majority stake. Invista [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: November 17th, 2011 In its first ever formal assessment of the stability of China’s financial system, the International Monetary Fund has blamed heavy-handed state intervention for creating “vulnerabilities” in the system, at the same time as providing Beijing with a detailed blueprint for reform. What the IMF recommended and China’s reaction [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: November 10th, 2011 The wild swings in global liquidity that continue to distort economies around the world might, if left unchecked, trigger the end of open capital markets and free trade, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney warned in a recent speech. Carney, named head of the G20’s Financial Stability [...]
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