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 [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 2nd, 2012 Financial commentators are, suddenly, in demand and it’s largely down to the continuing failure of banks to properly reform themselves in the wake of the global financial crisis and the current public rage about bankers who continue to award themselves massive pay packages even though their [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: January 27th, 2012 The board of Royal Bank of Scotland and its remuneration committee, led by the ex-Coca Cola executive Penny Hughes but also comprising ex-Standard Life boss Sandy Crombie, must have decided let’s just go for it and to hang with the consequences. The RBS board of directors [...]
January 21st, 2012 The current cross-party campaign to have Sir Fred Goodwin stripped of his knighthood makes for entertaining viewing, but I’m afraid I don’t agree with it. The current witchhunt is handy for the politicians. It gives the impression they’re doing something to punish a perpetrator of the banking crisis but, call me cynical, [...]
December 6th, 2011 In Video: Bell Pottinger Exposed from TBIJ on Vimeo. Senior executives at Bell Pottinger, a leading public relations and lobbying firm, has been caught bragging about their ability to influence David Cameron’s government and their use of the “dark arts” to bury negative coverage on behalf of repressive regimes. In an undercover [...]
October 5th, 2011 David Cameron displayed an astonishing lack of understanding of the banking sector in his interview with Sarah Montague on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Tuesday morning (as I’m afraid did Sarah, given her blinkered obsession with “bonuses”). If Cameron’s stumbling performance was due to ignorance, then it’s simply inexcusable. If [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: September 3rd, 2011 As leader of the opposition, David Cameron gave the impression he intended to be tough on the banks. In an interview with Sky News in January 2009, he called for criminal actions against bankers and earlier said we needed “a day of reckoning” for those [...]
February 12th, 2011 By Adam Ramsay, who blogs at Bright Green Scotland. “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. I was recently reminded of Milan Kundera’s famous quote. And how apt. Because more than anything else, this government is hoping that we forget. They are praying that we don’t [...]
September 8th, 2010 When prime minister David Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the World, as the Conservatives’ head of spin in June 2007, it was always seen as a bizarre appointment (and this was only partly because Coulson had left the paper under a cloud, resigning because of the phone [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Accountancy Magazine Date: June 1st, 2010 With a new government tackling the nation’s finances, political flash points will appear, warns Ian Fraser With the unprecedented political horse-trading of 7-11 May now behind it, and the coalition government of prime minister David Cameron and deputy Nick Clegg settled into Downing Street and [...]