May 16th, 2012 The Financial Services Authority today imposed a lifetime ban on Anthony Verrier, a senior executive at interdealer brokers BGC Partners, who two years ago was described by a judge as a liar with an extraordinary proclivity for “losing” Blackberries and mobile phones. On March 18th, 2010, Verrier (pictured right) was found guilty of orchestrating [...]
February 27th, 2010 (updated May 13th, 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? [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: May 6th, 2012 It was supposed to be Scotland’s safe bank. What went wrong? By Ian Fraser Call it Cameron Clyne’s ‘Derby’ moment. At a council of war in that East Midlands city in 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie had to concede that weak generalship, poor logistics and limited support [...]
April 4th, 2012 In the third in a series of guest posts, Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective, examines the strange assumption that ultimately led to the failure of the FSA When I was a detective at the Metropolitan Police Company Fraud Department, in 1984, my commander sent me to the USA to [...]
March 16th, 2012 In the second in a series of guest posts, Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective, provides a historical perspective on the UK authorities’ lack of appetite for prosecuting high level financial crime Edwin Sutherland, the American sociologist and criminologist (pictured right), is perhaps best known for his 1949 book ‘White [...]
March 20th, 2012 In this guest post, financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective Rowan Bosworth-Davies, puts his finger on the fundamental flaws in the way in which the financial sector is regulated in the UK. He believes the major issue is a cultural one. If fellow bankers are in charge of the regulator [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: March 18th, 2012 One of Scotland’s highest-profile investment experts, Alan Steel, has called on Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Turner to “consider his position” following Friday’s surprise resignation of the watchdog’s chief executive, Hector Sants. Sants’s departure followed a Sunday Herald exclusive in which influential Conservative Treasury Select [...]
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 Jim Parton Published: March 16th, 2012 Hector wasn’t a ‘card-carrying nasty bastard’. He was merely bland, writes former colleague Jim Parton ‘I couldn’t see the point of suffering in the City of London if the sums I earned were only mildly revolting as opposed to completely obscene.’ These were the somewhat amoral opening words [...]
March 16th, 2012 I am not surprised that Hector Sants, who has been chief executive of the FSA since July 2007 and joined it from Credit Suisse in May 2004, has resigned. He is to remain in post until June 29th to assure a smooth handover as the organisation moves towards its “twin peaks” regulatory model, [...]