September 28th, 2012 (updated Sept 29th, 2012) In the days after the Libor scandal erupted with the Barclays settlement of June 27th, there was little doubt about it. Banks including Barclays had been systematically engaged in the rigging, and attempts to rig, the Libor interbank rates as well as other aspects of the financial markets [...]
Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards Submission from Ian Fraser, 24 August 2012 [Update: January 12, 2013. This is my submission to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which is being chaired by Andrew Tyrie MP. Written in August 2012, it was published on the Parliamentary website [pdf 28mb] on December 19th, 2012 — it can be found on [...]
September 7th, 2012 The managing director of the Financial Services Authority, Martin Wheatley, has launched a stinging attack on ‘mis-selling’ of financial products by banks, building societies and other financial institutions to their retail customers, even describing the incentive schemes that underpinned the ‘misselling’ of payment protection insurance (PPI) as “rotten to the core”. In [...]
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 [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Herald Date: June 26, 2012 Disgraced former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Fred Goodwin will tell a court that he did not dupe the bank’s shareholders when he asked them for £12 billion just months before its near-collapse, writes IAN FRASER. Mr Goodwin and other former directors are facing a £3bn [...]
February 27th, 2010 (updated June 22nd, 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? [...]
Editorial note: June 22nd, 2012 A revised and updated version of this blog is now available via the following link:- The Worst Bank in the World? HBOS’s Calamitous Seven Year Life
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 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 [...]