April 16th, 2012 Barclays, Citibank, HSBC and Abbey National (now owned by Santander) helped to launder some $250 million for James Ibori, former the former governor of Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta State. The money was almost entirely siphoned from state funds. Ibori has been described by Sahara Reporters as:- “one of the most ingenious and mindless embezzlers of [...]
February 15th, 2012 Further to my recent story about Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank being essentially worthless following their reckless commercial property lending binge in 2005-07 and subsequent blog post, an analyst from UBS has sort of confirmed the story. UBS banking analyst Jonathan Mott is urging Cameron Clyne, chief executive of Melbourne-based NAB to sell [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 15th, 2012 The Financial Services Authority‘s chairman Lord Turner made a fairly staunch defense of FSA chief executive Hector Sants at a hearing of the Treasury Select Committee on January 30. But some of the MPs on the committee seemed unconvinced that Sants, who earned £807,000 as FSA chief executive in 2010, is the [...]
December 14th, 2011 An edited version of this blog post is available at Huffington Post UK The FSA spent an estimated £10m on its report into the failure of RBS, including £7.7m paid to ‘Big Four’ accountants PWC. But the Canary Wharf-based regulator has lived up to its name (the Fundamentally Supine Authority) and concluded [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: December 5th, 2011 Ever since its failures as a regulator first became widely apparent with the collapse of Northern Rock in September 2007, the UK’s Financial Services Authority has shown a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for rooting out financial crime, and very little introspection or contrition about its own pre-crisis performance. The reported [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 22nd, 2011 The gigantic $2.3 billion losses that Union Bank of Switzerland is blaming on a Ghanaian-born “rogue” trader have added power to the elbows of all those who believe that “casino” banking ought to be completely separated from “utility” banking and should never be underwritten by the taxpayer. UBS, [...]
September 15th, 2011 Ex-UBS trader Shaun Richards has come up with an interesting theory of what went wrong at UBS’s Delta One unit, whose trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested at 3.30am this morning and I believe remains in custody. Richards believes that the Swiss bank got caught with its trousers down when the Swiss central [...]
September 15th, 2011 So after Nick Leeson and Jerôme Kerviel, it seems that another ‘rogue’ trader is about to enter the annals of banking infamy. This time it’s the turn of the Nottingham University-educated market maker, Kweku Adoboli. Adoboli, a 31-year old trader in the bank’s City of London-based exchange-traded funds business, was arrested on [...]
By Ian Fraser, Financial Editor Sunday Herald July 31st, 2005 It’s Standard Life, sure, but not as we know it THE chief executive sat back in his leather office chair and rattled off some of the achievements his company has made over the past 12 months. Despite axing 2200 staff, the company is still attracting [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 3rd, 2004 Despite a drive by high street banks to corner the market in financial advice to the rich, independents still rule. By Ian Fraser IT seems like a no-brainer. Private banking, meaning looking after the banking and investment needs of Britain’s growing ranks of wealthier customers, [...]