By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: August 12th, 2012 STANDARD Chartered, the London-headquartered bank that does most of its business in Asia, was – until the beginning of last week – the last good bank standing. It was one of the select band of banks to characterise themselves as a cut above the rest, having […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: December 5th, 2011 Ever since its failures as a regulator first became widely apparent with the collapse of Northern Rock in September 2007, the UK’s Financial Services Authority has shown a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for rooting out financial crime, and very little introspection or contrition about its own pre-crisis performance. The reported […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: November 27th, 2011 Picture: courtesy of eFinancialNews Asset managers lose patience over £500,000 unpaid bill Lloyds Banking Group, whose shares tumbled last week on investor concern that it is in “chaos”, is being sued by an Aim-listed fund management company in which it owns a majority stake. Invista […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: November 4th, 2011 What’s up with Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond? In January, the US-born investment banker, who had recently taken over as Barclays boss, seemed in denial about the role of banks in the destruction of the global economy. Speaking to the Treasury Select Committee in January 2011, Diamond told […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date October 25th, 2011 For a central bank director, Andy Haldane is remarkably alert to the widening cracks in the global financial system. Delivering the Wincott Annual Memorial Lecture in London on October 24, Haldane tried to shake policymakers and regulators out of their complacency by calling for a “fundamental shift” […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: October 20th, 2011 There may be a good few Maoists, Trotskyists, Anarcho-Syndicalists and even the odd deluded benefit scrounger among them, but it is simply wrong to characterize the Occupy Wall Street protestors who are camping out in 1,500 cities worldwide as wanting to overthrow capitalism, in the same way […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 2nd, 2011 The “Big Four” accountancy firms, whose complacency and dereliction of duty were major contributors to the banking crisis that tipped the UK into recession, could be getting their comeuppance at the hands of the European Union. The story of Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PWC […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 28th, 2011 Why does anyone rely on ‘sellside’ research? The investment analysts who produce it, for free, tend to work for investment banks that also have some very big ticket services to sell, such as the underwriting of IPOs, to the very companies whose performance they are supposed […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 22nd, 2011 The gigantic $2.3 billion losses that Union Bank of Switzerland is blaming on a Ghanaian-born “rogue” trader have added power to the elbows of all those who believe that “casino” banking ought to be completely separated from “utility” banking and should never be underwritten by the taxpayer. UBS, […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: September 14th, 2011 The Independent Banking Commission was established by the UK’s coalition government in June 2010 as a means of kicking a thorny and divisive issue into the long grass. At the time, the divisions within the coalition government over what to do about the UK’s bloated and dysfunctional banking sector were […]