By Ian Fraser
Sunday Herald
September 21st 2008

It was at a lavish party at Spencer House, the opulent former London residence of the family of Diana, Princess of Wales, that HBOS’s fate was sealed. Sir Victor Blank, the city grandee who has been chairman of Lloyds TSB since May 2006, had been eyeing the possibility of a takeover of the Edinburgh-based bank [...]

By Ian Fraser
Sunday Herald
September 7th, 2008

Global threat is from geopolitics, not the credit crunch
THE SCOTTISH historian Niall Ferguson has warned that the strategic alliance between China and Russia is more of a threat to the West than the credit crunch.
Ferguson, a best-selling author, broadcaster and professor of history at Harvard University, said that the development [...]

By Ian Fraser and Mark Macaskill
The Sunday Times
August 5th, 2007
It is the site of one of Scotland’s most famous victories over the Auld Enemy yet is marked only by a delapidated coal bing and an anonymous cairn.
Now, more than 250 years after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite forces routed the Hanoverian troops of King George II, [...]

By Ian Fraser
The Sunday Times
Ecosse section
March 18th, 2007
A former army captain is set to trek from John O’Groats to Land’s End
WHEN the former army captain Grant Nicolle was casting around for the perfect antidote to the stresses and strains of the financial world, he alighted on his love of horses. But rather than opt for [...]

By Ian Fraser
The Scotsman
December 13th, 2006
David Stamp, architect and sailor
Born: 12 August, 1943, in Edinburgh.
Died: 18 November, 2006, in North Berwick, aged 64.
DAVID Stamp was an enthusiastic conservationist-turned-developer who played a big part in the renovation and redevelopment of Leith and Edinburgh’s New Town. Stamp, who was born in Edinburgh in 1943, pioneered the [...]

By Ian Fraser
Sunday Herald Magazine
November 5th, 2006
From Chopin to the fall of Communism, Gdansk promises a break that is alive with history.
GDANSK, an architectural gem on the Baltic coast, was almost completely destroyed by the Red Army in 1944-45. Luckily many of the grand Hanseatic buildings in its medieval town centre have since been immaculately [...]

By Ian Fraser
Financial Times
Business Life page
August 29th, 2006
Companies adopting viral campaigns need to be more creative than in traditional media – and beware of the many pitfalls, says Ian Fraser
Warner Music’s deal last week to promote Paris Hilton’s debut album on YouTube, the fast-growing video-sharing website, may make the socialite’s antics even more accessible to [...]

By Ian Fraser
Sunday Herald
August 27th, 2006

VAN VLISSINGEN: FINAL ACT
Billionaire’s Tournaig purchase was ‘philanthropic’
PAUL van Vlissingen, the billionaire owner of the Letterewe Estate, was still actively enlarging his Highland property interests up until his death in his Dutch home, Lunenberg Castle, near Utrecht.
Within the last few weeks, van Vlissingen – who died of pancreatic cancer on [...]

By Ian Fraser
Sunday Herald
April 16th, 2006

Why? This is probably the most stylish and comfortable hotel in Glasgow city centre, beating the likes of Hilton, Marriott and Thistle, thanks partly to its newness. The room I stayed in was large, had a modern Scandinavian feel to it, came with a selection of berries and mineral waters [...]

By Ian Fraser
Sunday Herald
April 2nd, 2006
IAN FRASER ON NEW LABOUR SPIN

While Tony Blair preaches climate change measures to the rest of the world, his government has deliberately excluded aviation from its greenhouse gases calculations

 
RADIOHEAD singer Thom Yorke recently said that he finds dealing with the New Labour spin-machine on the subject of climate change somewhat [...]