June 27th, 2014 (minor edits Oct 3rd) The Financial Conduct Authority, established in April 2013, has failed its first test. Its review of the interest rate swaps that were sold on an industrial scale by banks to gullible small business customers, especially in 2004-08, has fallen short on a number of fronts. (for more on the fraudulent […]
June 26th, 2014 By Rowan Bosworth-Davies One of the over-riding principles of free and well-regulated markets is that everyone who seeks access to trade must be permitted equal rights to knowledge of the prices being quoted, whether “buy” or “sell”. Anything less, and the market becomes a private playground for insiders who seek to benefit from […]
June 26th, 2014 The Royal Bank of Scotland seems to be rather confused over whether its infamous Global Restructuring Group is run as a “profit centre”. A job advertisement placed by the bank in January 2014, clearly states that the “role purpose” of relationship managers within GRG is to be “a major contributor to the […]
June 26th, 2014 The Royal Bank of Scotland, which last year made losses of £8.2 billion, held its annual general meeting yesterday. The shareholders’ gathering was a slightly calmer affair than some of the recent ones I have attended. Held at the bank’s sprawling, campus-style “world headquarters” at Gogarburn, near Edinburgh – itself a monument to the hubris […]
June 26th, 2014 By Rob Carver (guest blog) First we had PPI. Then Libor. Then the misselling of interest rate swaps to SMEs. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you LOBO-gate: how banks ripped off local authorities and housing associations from someone who was there. Cast your minds back to the early 2000s. Life was […]
June 25th, 2014 This short film uses extracts from a telephone call between a bank salesman and one of its business customers to illustrate how a bank, thought to be the Royal Bank of Scotland, essentially conned a business into purchasing an interest-rate hedging product that would be seriously damaging to its health. The other two voices are Gary Kendall, a financial […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: 8 June 2014 Ian Fraser’s new book, Shredded – Inside RBS: the Bank that Broke Britain, has been acclaimed as the definitive account of the crisis. Here he reflects on the 13 things he learned along the long, hard road to publication (1) Fred the Shred was not […]
June 5th, 2014 (updated June 6th, 2014) It has been nearly two years in the making, but Shredded: Inside RBS The Bank That Broke Britain was published by Birlinn today. It’s a look at the Icarus-like ascent of RBS under former chartered accountant Fred “The Shred” Goodwin, and examines many aspects of the bank’s spectacular rise […]