January 18th, 2013 (updated January 19th, 2013) Blair Jenkins, chief executive of the Yes Scotland campaign, today claimed that Scotland “might very well not have had a financial crisis” if it had been an independent country. This is a ridiculous claim which further undermines the credibility of the ‘Yes’ campaign, especially where business, finance and [...]
October 10th, 2012 Today the Financial Services Authority formally relaxed capital and liquidity rules on UK banks in the vague hope this might kickstart lending and do something to ensure the UK economy can pick itself up off the floor. The Canary Wharf-based regulator also said that it would not require banks to hold extra [...]
September 7th, 2012 When David Cameron reshuffled his cabinet earlier this week, the arrival of a trio City of London bankers and consultants at Her Majesty’s Treasury went almost unnoticed. This in my view was a lacuna. The three men are Paul Deighton, a former Goldman Sachs partner and chief operating officer for Europe (pictured above), Sajid [...]
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 [...]
June 29th, 2012 This is banking’s ‘Milly Dowler’ moment. Finally the blinkers are off and the rest of the world (by which I mean people like leading politicians and the mainstream commentariat) is waking up to the culture of self serving greed and corruption that has infested the UK’s banking sector, about which I’ve been [...]
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 [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: April 27th, 2012 The debate over executive pay is turning ugly. In the UK, investor disquiet about the unwarranted rewards routinely doled out to bankers despite weak and unethically achieved performance is reaching boiling point. It could well explode at the Barclays AGM in London’s Royal Festival Hall which [...]
April 16th, 2012 In this speech the economist and author John Kay examined how the financial sector continues to make — or claims to make — returns-on-equity which are way in excess of any reasonable estimate of cost of capital. Kay, a visiting professor at London School of Economics, examined various possible reasons but then focused on [...]
March 16th, 2012 In the second in a series of guest posts, Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective, provides a historical perspective on the UK authorities’ lack of appetite for prosecuting high level financial crime Edwin Sutherland, the American sociologist and criminologist (pictured right), is perhaps best known for his 1949 book ‘White [...]
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 [...]