January 18th, 2012 Ian Fraser’s introduction: This blog was written by Golem XIV, a pseudonym for filmmaker and author David Malone. The lies which got us to the purgatory we are in are being told all over again, right now, inside every bank in the Western world. Not by accident but on purpose, by men with [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 18th, 2011 One of Fred Goodwin’s first acts on being appointed RBS’s chief executive in 2000 was to sack PWC as auditors and to wheel in his ‘alma mater’, Deloitte. Ex-insiders suggest this was because Goodwin believed that Deloitte – where he cut his teeth in the [...]
December 14th, 2011 An edited version of this blog post is available at Huffington Post UK The FSA spent an estimated £10m on its report into the failure of RBS, including £7.7m paid to ‘Big Four’ accountants PWC. But the Canary Wharf-based regulator has lived up to its name (the Fundamentally Supine Authority) and concluded [...]
December 10th, 2011 A project with which I was involved… RBS: Inside the Bank that Ran Out of Money, a one hour BBC Television documentary charting the build up to the biggest bank failure in history, was first aired across the UK on BBC2 on Monday, December 5th. The one-hour film, produced by Tony Nellany [...]
November 21st, 2011 A documentary on which I worked as senior researcher and lead consultant is to be shown on BBC2 nationally on December 5th. The one-hour BBC film charts the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, starting with its £21bn acquisition of NatWest in February 2000 and ending soon after its [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: July 11th, 2011 Accountancy has changed beyond recognition since the 1970s. At that time the accountancy professor Roy Sidebotham wrote: “There seems to be no limit to the optimism of businessmen… which the growing complexity of the market opens up. The first line of defence of investors and creditors is the [...]
April 19th, 2011 I actually missed this. I was already inside the Royal Bank of Scotland annual general meeting when Kit Fraser (no relation), who is standing for election to the Scottish Parliament for the Ban Bankers’ Bonuses Party, stripped to his boxer shorts outside the entrance to the RBS conference centre. It is all part [...]
March 30th, 2011 Here is Lord MacGregor, a former Conservative chief secretary of the Treasury, unveiling the hard-hitting and long-awaited conclusions of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s report into audit profession. This is an inquiry I’ve been following with great interest and which I’ve written on Qfinance (Scrap mark-to-market accounting or face further [...]
December 28th, 2010 I’ve long suspected that, at least where banking and financial sector clients are concerned, the ‘Big Four’ audit firms now see their role as being to pull the wool over investors’ eyes. The theory is about to be tested in the US courts, where Ernst & Young stands accused of fraud over [...]