By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: November 6th, 2011 Nicolas Sarkozy had hoped to use his time as head of the G20 to achieve lofty goals like rethinking the global financial system and tackling commodity price volatility. But the French president has ended up doing little other than fire-fighting and his tenure may yet [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: November 4th, 2011 What’s up with Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond? In January, the US-born investment banker, who had recently taken over as Barclays boss, seemed in denial about the role of banks in the destruction of the global economy. Speaking to the Treasury Select Committee in January 2011, Diamond told [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date October 25th, 2011 For a central bank director, Andy Haldane is remarkably alert to the widening cracks in the global financial system. Delivering the Wincott Annual Memorial Lecture in London on October 24, Haldane tried to shake policymakers and regulators out of their complacency by calling for a “fundamental shift” [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: October 20th, 2011 There may be a good few Maoists, Trotskyists, Anarcho-Syndicalists and even the odd deluded benefit scrounger among them, but it is simply wrong to characterize the Occupy Wall Street protestors who are camping out in 1,500 cities worldwide as wanting to overthrow capitalism, in the same way [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 2nd, 2011 The “Big Four” accountancy firms, whose complacency and dereliction of duty were major contributors to the banking crisis that tipped the UK into recession, could be getting their comeuppance at the hands of the European Union. The story of Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PWC [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 28th, 2011 Why does anyone rely on ‘sellside’ research? The investment analysts who produce it, for free, tend to work for investment banks that also have some very big ticket services to sell, such as the underwriting of IPOs, to the very companies whose performance they are supposed [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 22nd, 2011 The gigantic $2.3 billion losses that Union Bank of Switzerland is blaming on a Ghanaian-born “rogue” trader have added power to the elbows of all those who believe that “casino” banking ought to be completely separated from “utility” banking and should never be underwritten by the taxpayer. UBS, [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 14th, 2011 The Independent Banking Commission was established by the UK’s coalition government in June 2010 as a means of kicking a thorny and divisive issue into the long grass. At the time, the divisions within the coalition government over what to do about the UK’s bloated and dysfunctional banking sector were [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: September 11th, 2011 NBNK REFUTES CLAIM AS SPECULATION OVER BANKING DEAL GROWS BY IAN FRASER The possible sale of Clydesdale Bank to an untested London-based shell company, NBNK Investments, risks triggering a rash of home repossessions and corporate bankruptcies across Scotland, according to a leading European banking expert. [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 8th, 2011 Few countries have been as well-cushioned from the global economic crisis as Norway. The country’s economy is on track to grow by 3% this year and 3.75% next year, according to central bank forecasts. Alongside Switzerland, Norway has the lowest level of unemployment in Europe, at [...]
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