19th November 2015 In an important speech given at the Finance Watch conference in Brussels on Tuesday, Robert Jenkins — a former member of the Bank of England’s financial policy committee — highlighted the dangers of a two-tier justice system in which senior bankers are effectively ‘above the law’. He also said that 47 banking scandals and the feeble nature of most […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Financial Intelligencer Date: 18 November 2015 Seven years since HBOS crashed and burned, we are about to find out why, from a report to be jointly published on Thursday morning by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority (part of the Bank of England). The Edinburgh-based bank, which had assets […]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Financial Intelligencer Date: 13 November 2015 The former oil industry executive whose evidence kicked off the corruption probe into Brazilian energy giant Petrobras – a scandal which has tipped Brazil into recession and may yet bring down its government – has spoken out for the first time since entering a […]
11th November 2015 It was midway between the canon of lamb and the passing of the port that George Osborne rose to his feet. Addressing a room of 350 white-tie wearing bankers, the 44-year-old Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to have a spring in his step. Just a few weeks earlier, the Tories had won a […]
8th November, 2015 In a stark warning to the government, the MP Steve Baker has said we’re flying blind where RBS and the wider banking system are concerned, as accounts prepared using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) cannot be relied upon. In what was the stand-out contribution to last Thursday’s House of Commons debate on RBS and the future […]
7th November 2015 The FactSheet compiled by RBS’s senior communications executive and deputy chief economist Andrew Wilson in February 2007 pleased his master, the bank’s chief executive, Fred Goodwin, as it put RBS’s financial success in context. But it was also incredibly bombastic and dangerously hubristic Royal Bank of Scotland issued an extraordinary flyer to journalists on the […]