March 31st, 2010 I’ve just realised that the charming individuals at Aim-listed accountants Vantis have warned that their business recovery division is unlikely to generate the revenues they expected in the year to April 2010. The distinctly dodgy and deeply troubled accountancy firm earlier warned that the litigation surrounding its appointment as liquidator to the […]
March 30th, 2010 TEN years after Don Cruickshank published his Review of Banking Services is a good time to take stock of Gordon Brown’s bizarre relationship with the banking fraternity. Brown commissioned the report as chancellor in 1998 at a time when, true to his early Socialist principles, he remained deeply sceptical of banks and […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Scotland on Sunday Date: March 28th, 2010 THE era of commercial wave farms off Scotland’s coast has come a step closer following ScottishPower Renewables’ purchase of a second-generation “sea snake” device from Leith-based Pelamis. The P2 Pelamis wave generator will be tested in the stormy seas off Orkney from summer 2011, […]
November 27th, 2010 (updated March 27th, 2011) I was shocked by the testimony given by the heads of the “Big Four” accountancy firms — PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young — to the House of Lords economic affairs committee on Tuesday, November 23rd 2010 (full video above and transcript of evidence). One of the […]
March 26th, 2010 Three years after the crisis began is as good a time as any to take stock of the US policy response to the fallout from the subprime catastrophe—and assess the response’s effectiveness in nursing the world’s largest economy back to health. One of the fiercest critics of recent US economic policy is […]
March 22nd, 2010 The former Salomon Brothers bond trader who lifted the lid on sharp practice in Wall Street with Liar’s Poker in 1989 has returned to his former stamping ground. In a new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis focuses not on bulge-bracket banks but on a small band of […]
March 18th, 2010 The time bombs detonated by the court-appointed examiner’s report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers have by no means all gone off. Indeed, further explosions are expected to continue to reverberate and echo around the financial and regulatory landscape for some years to come. The report—a 2,200-page, nine-volume page-turner written by lawyer […]
March 17th, 2010 Calls for Vantis, one of the UK’s dodgiest and most troubled accountancy firms, to be removed as receiver to the collapsed business empire of alleged fraudster Sir Allen Stanford (pictured above) are reaching a crescendo. Aim-listed Vantis is nearly bust — it only survives thanks to the generosity of state-owned banks RBS […]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Times Date: March 15th, 2010 The £955m sale of Pets at Home was a turning point for dealmaking; image from The Drum Corporate treasurers are on the look out for imaginative but prudent ways of financing tactical and strategic acquisitions, writes Ian Fraser During the credit crunch that commenced in […]
March 15th, 2010 America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and its London-based counterpart, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), both privately-owned and self-regulatory bodies, have for decades been trusted with the task of setting the accountancy standards that represent the bedrock for truthful financial reporting worldwide. In the light of the recent revelations about Lehman […]