By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: September 30th, 2012 Fund managers are ripping off their customers through a minefield of hidden charges, misleading advertising, and obfuscation over performance, according the founders of new campaign aimed at ensuring investors get a fairer deal. Alan and Gina Miller – a husband and wife team who held […]
September 28th, 2012 (updated Sept 29th, 2012) In the days after the Libor scandal erupted with the Barclays settlement of June 27th, there was little doubt about it. Banks including Barclays had been systematically engaged in the rigging, and attempts to rig, the Libor interbank rates as well as other aspects of the financial markets […]
September 26th, 2012 [Ian Fraser’s introduction] In this speech, Robert Jenkins blows apart the self-serving myths that bankers and their lobbyists have been peddling since the financial crisis ripped the financial system apart in 2007-. He also explains that ‘captured’ regulators and politicians have swallowed the myths whole. As a result, post-crisis regulatory reform is a mess […]
September 24th, 2012 I’m half way through Simon Carswell’s Anglo Republic: Inside the bank that broke Ireland, and it’s a gripping read. In the book Carswell, finance correspondent of the Irish Times, describes how, from small beginnings, Anglo Irish Bank became a highly leveraged bet on the future of Ireland’s increasingly unsustainable property market, became a […]
Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards Submission from Ian Fraser, 24 August 2012 [Update: January 12, 2013. This is my submission to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which is being chaired by Andrew Tyrie MP. Written in August 2012, it was published on the Parliamentary website [pdf 28mb] on December 19th, 2012 — it can be found on […]
September 18th, 2012 A satirical look at the banking and financial crisis from Bremner, Bird & Fortune. This is part one of a four-part series first broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 in November 2008.
September 17th, 2012 (Updated 11.25am) (edited Dec 16th 2012) Studiously ignoring the roles of “establishment” figures like Sir James Crosby and Lord Stevenson in the demise of disastrous Edinburgh-based bank HBOS, the Financial Services Authority is seeking to heap all the ordure on the less establishment Peter Cummings. Now I am not suggesting that Cummings is […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: September 16th, 2012 High profile figures say banker Peter Cummings has been made a scapegoat (Note: This is a longer version of an article published as the lead business story in the Sunday Herald on September 16th, 2012) Jim McColl, Scotland’s highest-profile business figure, has added his weight […]
September 14th, 2012 Kweku Adoboli, a former UBS’s trader, was a ‘rogue’ who fraudulently gambled away the bank’s money, “cooked the books”, doctored documents, faked profits, fabricated clients and lied to his bosses to boost his earnings power, according to an opening statement from prosecutor Sasha Wass QC in Southwark Crown Court today. Wass, of 6 […]
September 12th, 2012 (updated 9.45am September 13th) Here’s a statement issued this afternoon by the former HBOS director Peter Cummings, in the wake of today’s 92-page Final Notice from the FSA. For once, I agree with some of what Cummings says, especially about the FSA’s failure to bring other HBOS board directors — including its former chief […]