December 15th, 2012 In his testimony to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards taken, taken in private in his Dumbartonshire bungalow on November 27th, the former HBOS corporate chief executive Peter Cummings railed against the FSA and criticised his boardroom colleagues but seemed to be as much in denial as ever. There was no contrition, no [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 9th, 2012 Paul Moore, the whistleblower whose evidence was key to last week’s hearings of the parliamentary commission on banking, has accused his former HBOS boss Sir James Crosby of “trying to rewrite history” about Moore’s sacking from the Edinburgh-based bank. In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Moore [...]
December 1st, 2012 In a comment piece in Saturday’s Times, financial editor Patrick Hosking gave ten reasons why the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards must show absolutely no mercy to the former HBOS chief executive James Crosby when he appears before it at 3.30pm on Monday afternoon. This is no time for faux deference, taking mendacious spin at face value, letting [...]
November 26th, 2012 (updated November 27th 2012) [Note: if the video of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards' cross-examination of Sir Charles Dunstone and Sir Ron Garrick starts to play, you need to scroll down to the bottom of this blog post to pause or mute it] It is not often that I am gob-smacked [...]
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: Sunday Herald Date: July 22nd, 2012 Editorial note: This is a more detailed and complete version of an article published in the Sunday Herald on July 22nd, 2012. Police are poised to press charges against several HBOS bankers and consultants after a two-year investigation into large-scale fraud, money laundering and corruption [...]
July 13th, 2012 On Tuesday, I was interviewed by Max Keiser of the Keiser Report about the UK’s lack of appetite for prosecuting ’white collar’ crime. Max also asked me about the Libor rigging scandal, swaps misselling by UK banks, and much else besides. The progeamme was broadcast on Wednesday night and made available via [...]
July 12th, 2012 Adam Posen, a member of the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England, told a conference in Edinburgh that it’s high time the UK lost its “bank fetish” and stopped treating banking as strategic industry. He said we need countercyclical taxes on real estate and that we need to call the [...]
By Prem Sikka, University of Essex July 8th, 2012 The role of Barclays bank in manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) continues to dominate international financial media. The bank has already attracted fines from regulators in the UK and theUSA. But further revelations are likely as US Senate Committees are flexing their muscles, the UK [...]