Home » Gordon Brown You are browsing entries tagged with “Gordon Brown”

On the trail of Fred the Shred

By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: 8 June 2014 Ian Fraser’s new book, Shredded – Inside RBS: the Bank that Broke Britain, has been acclaimed as the definitive account of the crisis. Here he reflects on the 13 things he learned along the long, hard road to publication (1) Fred the Shred was not […]

June 8th, 2014 | Posted in Article Library | Read More »

Chuka Umunna: PWC’s useful idiot?

January 23rd, 2014 I’ve long wondered how committed the Labour shadow business secretary and MP for Streatham Chuka Umunna really is to UK banking reform. It seems the answer is “not very”. In the furore that followed the publication of the Tomlinson Report on November 25 last year, a report which (accurately, in my view) […]

January 23rd, 2014 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Is JP Morgan paying $13bn fines to cover up a greater level of criminal wrongdoing?

October 21st, 2013 Gordon Kerr, founder of Cobden Partners, has an interesting take on the $13 billion settlement that JPMorgan Chase is due to agree with the U.S. authorities to end civil claims over its sales of deceptive mortgage bonds. Speaking to Bloomberg TV’s Guy Johnson on “The Pulse” Kerr makes some interesting points. (1) […]

October 21st, 2013 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

UK: Divorce can be costly

By Ian Fraser Published: Investment & Pensions Europe Date: September 2nd, 2013 Ian Fraser finds that Scottish independence would create a host of complications for newly created cross-border pension funds. But neither the London nor Edinburgh governments seem willing to engage with the issues Politicians and civil servants on both sides of the Scottish-English border […]

September 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Article Library | Read More »

RBS’s light at end of the tunnel could be train that flattens it

By Ian Fraser Published: Yorkshire Post Date: March 1st, 2013 AS the Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester toured the broadcasters’ studios yesterday, he kept repeating the same mantras. He is “fixing RBS”; it is going from an “okay company” to being a “really good bank”; and “RBS will be ready to be privatised […]

March 1st, 2013 | Posted in Article Library | Read More »

Book review: Going for broke

By Ian Fraser Published: Scottish Review of Books Date November 17th, 2012 It was intended as a memorial to the Scots who died in the Napoleonic Wars. But it wasn’t long before the incomplete replica of the Parthenon on Calton Hill was labelled ‘Edinburgh’s disgrace’. This was because the so-called National Monument was left half-finished, with […]

November 17th, 2012 | Posted in Article Library | Read More »

Bremner, Bird & Fortune: Where did all the money go?

September 18th, 2012 A satirical look at the banking and financial crisis from Bremner, Bird & Fortune. This is part one of a four-part series first broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 in November 2008.

September 18th, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

It’s time the FSA learnt the lessons of Hillsborough. Eventually the truth will out

September 17th, 2012 (Updated 11.25am) (edited Dec 16th 2012) Studiously ignoring the roles of “establishment” figures like Sir James Crosby and Lord Stevenson in the demise of disastrous Edinburgh-based bank HBOS, the Financial Services Authority is seeking to heap all the ordure on the less establishment Peter Cummings. Now I am not suggesting that Cummings is […]

September 17th, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Loss of trust

By Ian Fraser Published: Signet Magazine Date: July 16th, 2012 (minor edits March 28th, 2013) Scottish banking was once renowned for prudential management. Today the association is rather different. Financial journalist Ian Fraser gives his view of events behind the collapse of RBS and HBOS and calls for a Leveson-style inquiry. PDF version of this […]

July 16th, 2012 | Posted in Article Library | Read More »

The 12 Barclays scandals that cast doubt on Diamond’s testimony

July 5th, 2012 (updated July 6th, 6.35pm and 11.58pm) Smearing the facilitators? Ex-Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond had been tipped to ‘throw his toys out of the pram’ in the Treasury Select Committee hearing this afternoon. He was expected to lash out at the authorities that had engineered his ousting. It was also thought he […]

July 5th, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Ian's Twitter feed