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How to drive cultural change in the banking sector

1 June 2016 By Cat MacLean On Tuesday 24th May I had the privilege of being asked to speak at Westminster – a first for me. The event was organised by a group of MPs, led by Calum Kerr, and lobbyists, all passionate about driving cultural change in British banking. The title of my talk […]

June 1st, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Just how corrupt is the UK?

By Ian Fraser 13th May 2016 How corrupt is Britain? Over the past few days quite a few people have been insisting Britain isn’t corrupt. They claim to see nothing wrong with Cameron describing countries such as Afghanistan and Nigeria, whose leaders were in London for the Anti-Corruption Summit in Lancaster House this week, as “fantastically corrupt”. When Cameron […]

May 13th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

RBS boss Ross McEwan answers critics live on LBC

29 April 2016 Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Ross McEwan appeared on LBC for a half-hour phone-in chaired by Nick Ferrari on 20th November last year. Callers included Ray Perman, former FT journalist and author of Hubris: How HBOS Wrecked The Best Bank In Britain, who asked some powerful questions about regulatory failure in the light […]

April 29th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

RBS fails to get two key elements in £33m swaps case struck out

26 April 2016 By Ian Fraser A High Court ruling over evidence relating to its rigging of Libor and the destruction of businesses via its global restructuring group, looks like a turning point for RBS The Royal Bank of Scotland has failed in its attempt to strike out key elements of a major claim against its activities, concerning both its infamous […]

April 26th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Richard Murphy: The hypocrisy of George Osborne on tax and transparency

15 April, 2016 The Treasury issued the following remarkably breathy press release last night: Chancellor George Osborne today (Thursday 14 April) unveiled a ground-breaking international deal to automatically share information on the ultimate owners of companies with key EU allies, making it more difficult for firms to dodge tax or funnel corrupt funds. Britain has […]

April 15th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Why we should worry about FRC evasiveness over HBOS

30 March 2016 By Atul K. Shah The failure of the UK’s fifth largest bank, HBOS, led to over £52 billion of losses, and had a significant impact on jobs, pensions and savings for thousands of people. In spite of a large number of enquiries and reports, no-one has gone to prison, nor has there so […]

March 30th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

KPMG’s annual report—vague about ethics

25 March 2016 By  Atul Shah The growing size and influence of “big four” accountancy firms as they further transform themselves into global business services supermarkets is generating alarm among many who are concerned about ethics, independence and truth. Our research at Suffolk Business School has raised a number of questions about the firms’ ethics, conflicts […]

March 25th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Guest blog: The ICAEW’s Michael Izza is wrong on UK status

18 March 2016 By Tony Shearer In the current issue of economia, house magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the institute’s chief executive Michael Izza (pictured right) let it be known that the UK had, once again, become one of the world’s ten least corrupt countries, citing Transparency International’s 2015 “global […]

March 18th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Open Letter to Nicola Sturgeon—are bankers ‘above the law’?

4th March 2016 [UPDATED 10TH MARCH 2016 TO INCLUDE A STATEMENT FROM POLICE SCOTLAND] It is increasingly apparent that our supposedly “independent” prosecutorial agencies — which include the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales, and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland — are useless when it comes to high-level fraud committed […]

March 4th, 2016 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

The 47 scandals that prove it’s no time to go soft on banks

19th November 2015 In an important speech given at the Finance Watch conference in Brussels on Tuesday, Robert Jenkins — a former member of the Bank of England’s financial policy committee — highlighted the dangers of a two-tier justice system in which senior bankers are effectively ‘above the law’. He also said that 47 banking scandals and the feeble nature of most […]

November 19th, 2015 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

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