April 14th, 2012 Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s executive director for financial stability, last year warned that high frequency trading has become an “arms race” that imperils the whole financial system. In a speech in Beijing in July 2011, Haldane said:- Arms races rarely have a winner. This one may be no exception. In [...]
April 4th, 2012 In the third in a series of guest posts, Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective, examines the strange assumption that ultimately led to the failure of the FSA When I was a detective at the Metropolitan Police Company Fraud Department, in 1984, my commander sent me to the USA to [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: April 4th, 2012 Michel Barnier is viewed with a mixture of fear and loathing in the City of London. In the Square Mile the Frenchman is variously regarded as a bogeyman, a champion of dirigisme, and even as the ringleader of a sinister Franco-German plot to undermine London’s position and ensure [...]
April 3rd, 2012 Donald Trump does Bohemian Rhapsody from Hazel Cameron on Vimeo. In November 2010 Queen guitarist Brian May gave his permission for Bohemian Rhapsody to be reworked to highlight what he described as “…a horrible example of bullying the defenceless by a rich man who apparently can buy anyone or anything he wants.” [...]
By Carol Craig March 30th, 2012 Image © David McCue from movie poster of You’ve Been Trumped Introduction: This post was written by Carol Craig, chief executive of the Centre for Confidence & Wellbeing If you’ve ever wondered what the unfettered pursuit of economic growth looks like, and the damage it can create, go and see [...]
March 26th, 2012 Two Goldman Sachs “clients” — Sally and Helmut — wonder whether they are clients or muppets in the wake of Greg Smith’s devastating “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs” Op-Ed published in the New York Times on March 14th. In his resignation letter, South African-born Smith, who ran the investment bank’s equity derivatives [...]
March 16th, 2012 In the second in a series of guest posts, Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective, provides a historical perspective on the UK authorities’ lack of appetite for prosecuting high level financial crime Edwin Sutherland, the American sociologist and criminologist (pictured right), is perhaps best known for his 1949 book ‘White [...]
March 20th, 2012 In this guest post, financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective Rowan Bosworth-Davies, puts his finger on the fundamental flaws in the way in which the financial sector is regulated in the UK. He believes the major issue is a cultural one. If fellow bankers are in charge of the regulator [...]
March 18th, 2012 Demands for a Leveson-style public inquiry into the UK’s dysfunctional banking sector are reaching a crescendo following the FSA’s partial whitewash of the RBS collapse, a cover-up of events surrounding the Bradford & Bingley rights issue, doubts about the regulator’s commitment to getting to the bottom of what happened at HBOS and much establishment [...]
March 16th, 2012 I am not surprised that Hector Sants, who has been chief executive of the FSA since July 2007 and joined it from Credit Suisse in May 2004, has resigned. He is to remain in post until June 29th to assure a smooth handover as the organisation moves towards its “twin peaks” regulatory model, [...]