Latest articles by Ian Fraser, published by newspapers including Daily Mail, Financial News, Financial Times, Independent on Sunday, Mail on Sunday, Sunday Herald, The Herald and he Sunday Times, and magazines including Accountancy, CA Magazine, EVCJ and Scottish Business Insider. Articles by other journalists and writers are also occasionally republished here, with their permission.
By Ian Fraser
Published: Sunday Herald
Date: August 29th, 2010
Martin Gilbert, chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, has declared that big institutions that straddle the investment and mainstream banking divide should be broken up.
Echoing the views of Scots economist and author John Kay, who coined the widely used “casino” and “utility” banking analogy for the divide, and [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: The Sunday Times
Date: August 22nd, 2010
The Hebridean island has teamed up with energy giant Scottish Power to tap a reliable source of electricity with underwater turbines
When the MV Eilean Dhiura ferry crosses the Sound of Islay, passengers often think she is heading in the wrong direction. The small roll-on, roll-off vessel has [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: Sunday Herald
Date: August 15th, 2010
Interview of the week: Angus Macdonald (image from Sunday Herald)
A little over three years ago, Angus MacDonald saw the future… and he decided it was rubbish. This was nothing to do with his outlook on life, though. The Highland entrepreneur, fresh from selling his 25% stake in the [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: Sunday Herald
Date: August 8th, 2010
Three years after the onset of the credit crisis, when several British banks narrowly avoided bankruptcy thanks to Government intervention, it seems the prescribed regime of management clear-outs, capital rebuilding, global retrenchment, cost-cutting and a more considered approach to lending is beginning to bear fruit.
The half-year results for [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: The Sunday Times
Date: June 27th, 2010
Buy-back deal allows Corporate Jet Service directors to avoid millions of pounds of debt to unsecured creditors
Directors of an aviation business that went bust owing HBOS £113m were able to buy it back from the administrators for an initial payment of just seven pounds.
The deal enabled the [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: Financial Times (FTfm)
Date: June 21st, 2010
The ghost of a dead economist was haunting the Zermatt Summit, a new annual event on the subject of ‘humanizing globalization’ held earlier this month. Several speakers at the three-day conference, held in the picturesque Swiss alpine resort in the shadow of the Matterhorn, denounced the Nobel [...]
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 Cameron Farley in a [...]
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 revealed two weeks ago [...]
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 smorgasbord of different [...]
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 of institutional investors to [...]