By Ian Fraser Published: Daily Record Date: March 1st, 2013 Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester was yesterday touring the television studios trying to convince us that he is absolutely determined to make RBS into a “really good bank” once again. The fox-hunting laird of Gogarburn also told us that RBS staff will share [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: February 10th, 2013 It has been described as the biggest banking felony in history … yet no-one has been prosecuted for the Libor fixing scandal. Ian Fraser looks at the RBS sacrificial lambs. [An edited version of this article was published on pages 34-35 the Sunday Herald on [...]
February 6th, 2013 If this is the best he can do, Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester should consider throwing in the towel and conceding what most people already know — that RBS, as it stands, is unmanageable and running an unsustainable business model. Hester (who remains in denial about the egregious wrongdoing [...]
February 6th, 2013 Kevin Mason, a commenter on the Guardian website, had this to say about the £390 million settlement that Royal Bank of Scotland reached with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, US Department of Justice and Financial Services Authority over rampant Libor-rigging today [Mason's words sourced from Graeme Wearden's excellent Libor rigging live blog published [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 21st, 2012 Stephen Hester and Sir Philip Hampton may be in bullish mood, but is RBS as strong as they claim? By Ian Fraser (Image: The Sun) THE chairman and chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland had something of a spring in their step last week. The [...]
October 18th, 2012 By Rowan Bosworth-Davies “Go where you will, in business parts, or meet who you like of businessmen, it is – and has been for the last three years – the same story and the same lament. Dishonesty, untruth, and what may, in plain English, be termed mercantile swindling within the limits of [...]
October 2nd, 2012 Speaking to an audience of students and finance industry insiders at the London School of Economics yesterday, Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester renounced the Friedman Doctrine that has done so much damage to our economy and society since the 1970s. Hester said that banks and other companies have been [...]
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 [...]
August 7th, 2012 By Paul Moore Ian Fraser’s introduction: Paul Moore, the ‘HBOS whistleblower’, has launched a new organisation, the New Wilberforce Alliance, which aims to free the world from the modern-day slavery caused by the financialisation of our culture that took root in the 1980s. Here, Moore explains how the recent revelations of rampant [...]