By Ian Fraser Published: Qfinance Date: June 18th, 2012 I was surprised and exasperated to learn last week that chancellor George Osborne has rubber-stamped the appointment of John Griffith-Jones, the senior partner of KPMG, as chairman-designate of the Financial Conduct Authority, one of the two financial regulators that will take over from the soon-to-be-disbanded FSA. As [...]
March 30th, 2011 Here is Lord MacGregor, a former Conservative chief secretary of the Treasury, unveiling the hard-hitting and long-awaited conclusions of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s report into audit profession. This is an inquiry I’ve been following with great interest and which I’ve written on Qfinance (Scrap mark-to-market accounting or face further [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: February 20th, 2011 A CORPORATE whistleblower’s eight-year battle over his claims that Scottish Widows policyholders were deprived of £1.5 billion during the Lloyds takeover is to be the subject of an English high court hearing. Graham Senior-Milne, a former internal auditor at Lloyds TSB and Scottish Widows, is [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: January 16th, 2011 Paul Moore, former head group regulatory risk at HBOS-turned-whistleblower, has cast doubt on the rigour of the Financial Services Authority’s ongoing investigation into the collapse of the Edinburgh-based bank, on the grounds that informed critical witnesses have not been approached for evidence. Moore said he [...]
December 28th, 2010 I’ve long suspected that, at least where banking and financial sector clients are concerned, the ‘Big Four’ audit firms now see their role as being to pull the wool over investors’ eyes. The theory is about to be tested in the US courts, where Ernst & Young stands accused of fraud over [...]
December 21st, 2010 Today’s biggest financial news story was that the New York attorney-general is suing the accountancy firm Ernst & Young for fraud following its alleged role in the cooking the Lehman Brothers books in the years prior to the investment bank’s September 2008 demise. I’d like to focus here on the way in [...]
December 3rd, 2010 (update 3) THE Financial Services Authority’s obsession with “light touch”, laissez-faire regulation in 1997-2008 did more than anything to transform London into the “Wild West” of finance. US investment banks dramatically built up their presences in the UK capital in the period: they knew they could rely on the FSA to turn [...]
December 2nd, 2010 The Financial Services Authority this morning declared that, after a 17-month “investigation”, it has concluded that none of the RBS directors who led the bank to the biggest banking failure in history, costing the British taxpayer a total of £1.3 trillion to bail out, did anything wrong. In an article called The [...]
Blog post revised and retitled October 3rd, 2010 A fourth person has been arrested in relation to Thames Valley Police’s investigation into “corruption and large-scale fraud in connection with HBOS”. [Note: comments on this post have now been disabled and earlier comments from witnesses have been removed as a result of the police investigation "Operation [...]
August 28th, 2010 (edited January 6th, 2013) [Editorial Note: This article was written in June 2010 but has not previously been published in its entirety. An edited version was published in The Sunday Times on June 27th, 2010] Directors of an aviation business that crash landed owing HBOS £113 million in September 2007 were allowed to [...]