By Carol Craig March 30th, 2012 Image © David McCue from movie poster of You’ve Been Trumped Introduction: This post was written by Carol Craig, chief executive of the Centre for Confidence & Wellbeing If you’ve ever wondered what the unfettered pursuit of economic growth looks like, and the damage it can create, go and see […]
March 26th, 2012 Two Goldman Sachs “clients” — Sally and Helmut — wonder whether they are clients or muppets in the wake of Greg Smith’s devastating “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs” Op-Ed published in the New York Times on March 14th. In his resignation letter, South African-born Smith, who ran the investment bank’s equity derivatives […]
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 […]
March 20th, 2012 In this guest post, financial crime consultant and former Scotland Yard detective Rowan Bosworth-Davies, puts his finger on the fundamental flaws in the way in which the financial sector is regulated in the UK. He believes the major issue is a cultural one. If fellow bankers are in charge of the regulator […]
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 18th, 2012 Demands for a Leveson-style public inquiry into the UK’s dysfunctional banking sector are reaching a crescendo following the FSA’s partial whitewash of the RBS collapse, a cover-up of events surrounding the Bradford & Bingley rights issue, doubts about the regulator’s commitment to getting to the bottom of what happened at HBOS and much establishment […]
By Jim Parton Published: March 16th, 2012 Hector wasn’t a ‘card-carrying nasty bastard’. He was merely bland, writes former colleague Jim Parton ‘I couldn’t see the point of suffering in the City of London if the sums I earned were only mildly revolting, as opposed to completely obscene.’ These were the somewhat amoral opening words […]
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 […]
March 13th, 2012 You couldn’t make this up. Given the shocking way in which Bank of Scotland treats its customers – and particularly how it and parent company Lloyds Banking Group have treated the former business customers whose lives and companies have been destroyed as a result of the bank’s £1 billion plus “Reading Fraud” of 2003-08 […]