April 15th, 2013 Ten days ago the former bosses of HBOS were accused of a “colossal failure of management” by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. Today Channel 4 News’s business correspondent Siobhan Kennedy tried to catch up with the bank’s former chief executive, Andy Hornby. Now chief executive of the betting chain Gala Coral, [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 9th, 2012 Paul Moore, the whistleblower whose evidence was key to last week’s hearings of the parliamentary commission on banking, has accused his former HBOS boss Sir James Crosby of “trying to rewrite history” about Moore’s sacking from the Edinburgh-based bank. In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Moore [...]
December 1st, 2012 In a comment piece in Saturday’s Times, financial editor Patrick Hosking gave ten reasons why the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards must show absolutely no mercy to the former HBOS chief executive James Crosby when he appears before it at 3.30pm on Monday afternoon. This is no time for faux deference, taking mendacious spin at face value, letting [...]
November 19th, 2012 My review of Ray Perman’s Hubris: How HBOS Wrecked the Best Bank in Britain was published in the Scottish Review of Books at the weekend. The full review — which is in fact more of an essay about how a small group of misguided people trashed Scotland’s banking sector and squandered three [...]
September 17th, 2012 (Updated 11.25am) (edited Dec 16th 2012) Studiously ignoring the roles of “establishment” figures like Sir James Crosby and Lord Stevenson in the demise of disastrous Edinburgh-based bank HBOS, the Financial Services Authority is seeking to heap all the ordure on the less establishment Peter Cummings. Now I am not suggesting that Cummings is [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Signet Magazine Date: July 16th, 2012 (minor edits March 28th, 2013) Scottish banking was once renowned for prudential management. Today the association is rather different. Financial journalist Ian Fraser gives his view of events behind the collapse of RBS and HBOS and calls for a Leveson-style inquiry. PDF version of this [...]
February 27th, 2010 (updated June 22nd, 2012) HBOS’s entrance on The Mound; Image: The We Lessons must be learnt from the short and calamitous history of HBOS, the bank which effectively went bust in September 2008, writes Ian Fraser (Note: This article was first posted under the headline “HBOS: When did the rot set in? [...]
Editorial note: June 22nd, 2012 A revised and updated version of this blog is now available via the following link:- The Worst Bank in the World? HBOS’s Calamitous Seven Year Life
March 10th, 2012 Yesterday was an extraordinary day in the world of banking. First we had confirmation from Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland that they are doling out obscene sums in bonuses to executives, even as performance flags and share prices plunge. Then we had the ridiculous saga of the IDSA determinations [...]
April 18th, 2010 Gordon Brown’s hypocrisy towards the banking sector knows no bounds. The doomed prime minister recently branded investment bank Goldman Sachs “morally bankrupt” and asked the FSA to investigate. Yet Brown has ignored corruption and moral bankruptcy closer to home. Has he “forgotten” that, eighteen months ago, he was alerted to one of [...]