December 15th, 2012 An open letter to David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, from Mrs N Turner Dear Mr Cameron, I and many other people were stunned by the quotes from Mr Andrew Bailey, the chief executive-designate of the Prudential Regulation Authority, which were reported in the Daily Telegraph […]
December 15th, 2012 Image: WilliamBanzai7 The ‘settlements’ that London-headquartered banks HSBC and Standard Chartered have reached with the US authorities over serious criminal offences — including sanctions-busting and aiding and abetting terrorism and the global drug trade — are a travesty of justice. Even The Economist, a publication of which I am not usually fan, had […]
December 15th, 2012 In his testimony to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards taken, taken in private in his Dumbartonshire bungalow on November 27th, the former HBOS corporate chief executive Peter Cummings railed against the FSA and criticised his boardroom colleagues but seemed to be as much in denial as ever. There was no contrition, no […]
December 9th, 2012 Having endured three and half hours of the “evasive, repetitive, unrealistic” former HBOS chairman Lord Stevenson last Tuesday, I was amused to read what Kate Burgess had to say about the fiddle-playing peer in the Financial Times’ Lombard column on Wednesday. God Bless Lord Dennis Stevenson. The former HBOS chairman says governance at the […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Qfinance Date: December 3rd, 2012 Just in case the two men who were recently installed as China’s leader-in-waiting – premier-designate Li Keqiang and Communist Party of China chief and president-designate Xi Jinping – are short of advice about how best to steer the Chinese economy over the next few years, they have just […]
December 1st, 2012 In a comment piece in Saturday’s Times, financial editor Patrick Hosking gave ten reasons why the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards must show absolutely no mercy to the former HBOS chief executive James Crosby when he appears before it at 3.30pm on Monday afternoon. This is no time for faux deference, taking mendacious spin at face value, letting […]
November 26th, 2012 Finally, the UK chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne has done something right. He has appointed Mark Carney, the current governor of the Bank of Canada, as the next governor of the Bank of England. Carney is due to succeed Sir Mervyn King on 1st July 2013. I guess the bookies have […]
November 26th, 2012 (updated November 27th 2012) [Note: if the video of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards’ cross-examination of Sir Charles Dunstone and Sir Ron Garrick at the foot of this blog post starts to play, you need to scroll down to the bottom of this blog post to pause or mute it] It […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Qfinance Date: November 26th, 2012 Many of François Hollande’s predecessors as French president have publicly stressed the need for structural reforms – for example plans to raise the pension age, or measures to free up France’s labor market – but balked before implementing them. It happened to ex-president Jacques Chirac, who shelved plans for […]
November 25th, 2012 Hugh Hendry, founder and chief investment officer of London-based Eclectica Asset Management, gave this interview to the Economist’s Philip Coggan at the Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering on October 25. The Scots-born hedge fund manager admits to having “a history of contentious posturing,” where investment decision-making is concerned adding that, sometimes, “I hear these […]