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 16th, 2012 In this speech the economist and author John Kay examined how the financial sector continues to make — or claims to make — returns-on-equity which are way in excess of any reasonable estimate of cost of capital. Kay, a visiting professor at London School of Economics, examined various possible reasons but then focused on [...]
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 10th, 2012 Yesterday was an extraordinary day in the world of banking. First we had confirmation from Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland that they are doling out obscene sums in bonuses to executives, even as performance flags and share prices plunge. Then we had the ridiculous saga of the IDSA determinations [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: March 4th, 2012 Hector Sants, current chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), is not the right man to lead the London-based regulator’s successor body the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA), one of the Conservative Party’s chief spokesmen on financial services has declared. “I have deep reservations about [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 15th, 2012 The Financial Services Authority‘s chairman Lord Turner made a fairly staunch defense of FSA chief executive Hector Sants at a hearing of the Treasury Select Committee on January 30. But some of the MPs on the committee seemed unconvinced that Sants, who earned £807,000 as FSA chief executive in 2010, is the [...]
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. [...]
January 31st, 2012 The man who destroyed the Bank of Scotland with a reckless and seemingly out-of-control corporate and real-estate lending spree is in the media again. Mortgage Strategy has an article (Living in the age of less reason) which touches on the “pig on pork” or integrated finance model favoured by Peter Cummings, who [...]
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, [...]