By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 14th, 2012 At a hearing of the Treasury Select Committee last month Hector Sants (full video above), chief executive of UK regulator the Financial Services Authority, seemed determined to persuade the MPs that he had done something – anything – to prevent the failure of Royal Bank of Scotland. [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: February 12th, 2012 From the perspective of its head office in Melbourne’s Bourke Street, National Australia Bank’s UK subsidiaries Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank are looking increasingly like dead weights at the moment. The Australian economy, where the Victoria-based bank has the bulk of its operations, is booming and [...]
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: Sunday Herald Date: December 18th, 2011 (minor edits March 31st, 2013) One of Fred Goodwin’s first acts on being appointed RBS’s chief executive on March 6, 2000 was to sack PWC as auditors and to wheel in his ‘alma mater’, Deloitte & Touche. Ex-insiders suggest this was because Goodwin believed that [...]
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 [...]
October 16th, 2011 Tomorrow, a one-hour documentary on which I’ve been working, RBS: Inside the Bank That Ran Out of Money, will be shown on BBC One Scotland. The film should be networked across the UK before the end of the year. (The full one-hour movie is available to watch here). The investigative documentary charts [...]
March 3rd, 2011 (edited September 16th, 2012) Here is what my favourite analyst, BGC Partners’ David Buik, had to say about former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin three years ago:- “Fred Goodwin is as good as you’ll get … He has the right vision.” Buik was quoted as saying this in an [...]
January 24th, 2010 By Malcolm Fraser The news that the disgraced former chief executive of RBS, Fred Goodwin, has been given a berth at architecture firm RMJM is strangely delicious, like hearing that the school bully, who is still treated with respect by too many, has turned-up wearing a British National Party badge. RMJM are, [...]
June 28th, 2009 Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC, recently had lunch with Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, in the Pont de la Tour restaurant overlooking the Thames — and Barber has written an account of the repast in the Weekend FT. Green, who was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1988, comes over [...]