18 March 2016 By Tony Shearer In the current issue of economia, house magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the institute’s chief executive Michael Izza (pictured right) let it be known that the UK had, once again, become one of the world’s ten least corrupt countries, citing Transparency International’s 2015 “global […]
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 […]
January 23, 2015 (corrected March 2, 2015. See note) When John Griffith-Jones and Martin Wheatley, chairman and chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, appear before the Treasury Select Committee at 9.30am next Tuesday, 27 January, the 13 MPs on the committee have an unprecedented opportunity to establish whether the FCA, just like its predecessor the FSA, is colluding with banks to cover up […]
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 […]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Parliamentary Review Date: September 30th, 2013 The Libor scandal It was described as the banking industry’s ‘tobacco moment’. In June last year, Barclays was fined £290 million by US and UK regulators and judicial authorities after it admitted to systematically rigging the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor). Libor is the […]
April 20th, 2013 Trust in UK financial regulation and auditing cannot be rebuilt unless John Griffith-Jones (pictured right) steps down as chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority, writes HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore, who is also calling for a public inquiry into KPMG’s pre-crash audits of the collapsed bank HBOS. The need for such an inquiry was reinforced on 11 April, […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: February 10th, 2013 It has been described as the biggest banking felony in history … yet no-one has been prosecuted for the Libor fixing scandal. Ian Fraser looks at the RBS sacrificial lambs. [An edited version of this article was published on pages 34-35 the Sunday Herald on […]
February 6th, 2013 If this is the best he can do, Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester should consider throwing in the towel and conceding what most people already know — that RBS, as it stands, is unmanageable and running an unsustainable business model. Hester (who remains in denial about the egregious wrongdoing […]
February 6th, 2013 Kevin Mason, a commenter on the Guardian website, had this to say about the £390 million settlement that Royal Bank of Scotland reached with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, US Department of Justice and Financial Services Authority over rampant Libor-rigging today [Mason’s words sourced from Graeme Wearden’s excellent Libor rigging live blog published […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 9th, 2012 Paul Moore, the whistleblower whose evidence was key to last week’s hearings of the parliamentary commission on banking, has accused his former HBOS boss Sir James Crosby of “trying to rewrite history” about Moore’s sacking from the Edinburgh-based bank. In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Moore […]