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 [...]
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 16th, 2012 I am not surprised that Hector Sants, who has been chief executive of the FSA since July 2007 and joined it from Credit Suisse in May 2004, has resigned. He is to remain in post until June 29th to assure a smooth handover as the organisation moves towards its “twin peaks” regulatory model, [...]
March 16th, 2012 Ian Fraser’s introduction: This blog was written by Golem XIV, a pseudonym for filmmaker and author David Malone. Imagine if you were in a plane and you looked down and spread out beneath you, majestic in the ocean, was an entire mighty battle fleet. And then it sank; not just one, but every [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Herald Date: March 12th, 2012 Unedited version of article published earlier today in The Herald WARNINGS of legal action will be delivered today to former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin and his ex-boardroom colleagues over allegations that they misled shareholders into investing £12 billion in the bank shortly before [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: February 26th, 2012 Results released last Friday showed a sea of red ink engulfing the state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group. Trumpeted at the time of its September 2008 formation as the “bank for Britain”, the 41%-taxpayer owned business unveiled annual losses of £3.5 billion for 2011, nearly double those [...]
February 23rd, 2012 Stephen Hester was in combative form in his interview with Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow earlier this evening. He sought to defend the bank’s decision to pay a total of £985m in staff bonuses during 2011, despite mounting losses and scepticism it can be returned to the private sector within the original [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 2nd, 2012 Financial commentators are, suddenly, in demand and it’s largely down to the continuing failure of banks to properly reform themselves in the wake of the global financial crisis and the current public rage about bankers who continue to award themselves massive pay packages even though their [...]
January 28th, 2012 Labour is being supremely hypocritical over the £1 million share-based bonus recently awarded to RBS boss Stephen Hester. It was the government of Gordon Brown, which didn’t leave Downing Street until May 2010, that signed off the original contract and subsequent long-term remuneration policies that made the bonus possible. The ministers who [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: January 27th, 2012 The board of Royal Bank of Scotland and its remuneration committee, led by the ex-Coca Cola executive Penny Hughes but also comprising ex-Standard Life boss Sandy Crombie, must have decided let’s just go for it and to hang with the consequences. The RBS board of directors [...]