By Ian Fraser Published: Daily Record Date: June 13th, 2013 Stephen Hester’s five years at the helm of Royal Bank of Scotland were nothing if not tumultuous. Under his predecessor, Fred Goodwin, retail banking operations were used as a cash cow to fund overseas expansion, staff were demoralised by a regime of fear, and many [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Daily Record Date: March 1st, 2013 Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester was yesterday touring the television studios trying to convince us that he is absolutely determined to make RBS into a “really good bank” once again. The fox-hunting laird of Gogarburn also told us that RBS staff will share [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: February 10th, 2013 It has been described as the biggest banking felony in history … yet no-one has been prosecuted for the Libor fixing scandal. Ian Fraser looks at the RBS sacrificial lambs. [An edited version of this article was published on pages 34-35 the Sunday Herald on [...]
October 18th, 2012 By Tom Nicol ‘Then the flying machines started falling from the sky.’ Once upon a time in the Westerlands, people became aware of a developing phenomenon: flying machines were falling from the sky with a great deal more regularity than was previously the case. Understandably, the people became uneasy and started to [...]
September 26th, 2012 [Ian Fraser's introduction] In this speech, Robert Jenkins blows apart the self-serving myths that bankers and their lobbyists have been peddling since the financial crisis ripped apart the global financial system in 2007-. He also explains that, unfortunately ‘captured’ regulators and politicians have swallowed the myths whole. The unsurprising consequence is that post-crisis [...]
September 14th, 2012 Kweku Adoboli, a former UBS’s trader, was a ’rogue’ who fraudulently gambled away the bank’s money, “cooked the books”, doctored documents, faked profits, fabricated clients and lied to his bosses to boost his earnings power, according to an opening statement from prosecutor Sasha Wass QC in Southwark Crown Court today. Wass, of 6 [...]
September 7th, 2012 The managing director of the Financial Services Authority, Martin Wheatley, has launched a stinging attack on ‘mis-selling’ of financial products by banks, building societies and other financial institutions to their retail customers, even describing the incentive schemes that underpinned the ‘misselling’ of payment protection insurance (PPI) as “rotten to the core”. In [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: April 27th, 2012 The debate over executive pay is turning ugly. In the UK, investor disquiet about the unwarranted rewards routinely doled out to bankers despite weak and unethically achieved performance is reaching boiling point. It could well explode at the Barclays AGM in London’s Royal Festival Hall which [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: CA Magazine Date: April 2nd, 2012 New regulations for banks aim to prevent a repeat of the 2008 meltdown, but are they in fact hampering their ability to do business and aid economic recovery, asks Ian Fraser During the two decades leading up to the banking crisis, the banks had never [...]
February 23rd, 2012 Stephen Hester was in combative form in his interview with Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow earlier this evening. He sought to defend the bank’s decision to pay a total of £985m in staff bonuses during 2011, despite mounting losses and scepticism it can be returned to the private sector within the original [...]