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: Sunday Herald Date: 20 April 2014 Bank accused of misdirecting attention from lawyer’s true findings By Ian Fraser RBS has been accused of using diversionary tactics by Lawrence Tomlinson, an adviser to Vince Cable, after a report into accusations of malpractice by the bank. Tomlinson told the Sunday Herald the substance […]
December 17th, 2013 (minor revisions December 18th, 2013) Here’s the Channel 4 News report on the behaviour of RBS and its global restructuring group from Monday 25 November — the day that the Tomlinson Report was published. Jon Snow opened the piece by saying:- “They’re accused of deliberately driving viable small businesses into the ground – in order […]
December 7th, 2013 A former insider at Royal Bank of Scotland’s Irish subsidiary, Ulster Bank, has shed further light on the alleged systematic abuse of business customers by the bank’s “recovery and restructuring” arm, which includes Global Restructuring Group and West Register. In a candid interview with Ireland’s Sunday Independent the whistleblower – who is reported […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 1st, 2013 In a recent Business Focus, the Sunday Herald presented a rough guide to the £1 trillion of time bombs metaphorically ticking beneath the plush carpets of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters. What we didn’t predict was that two of these would explode in the […]
November 30th, 2013 [minor edits February 17th, 2014] The recording below gives a fair impression of the bullying methods deployed by RBS and its “restructuring and recovery” division, Global Restructuring Group, to extort money and impose crippling additional costs on its business customers. The critical point here is the main reason that Trihealth is struggling […]
November 27th, 2013 (updated November 28th, 2013) (minor edits December 1st, 2013) Another of the banking scandals I’ve been covering for more than three years is gaining a wider audience, following the publication of the Tomlinson Report on Monday and this morning’s confirmation from the Financial Times that the Serious Fraud Office is “considering” an investigation into the […]
By James Nicholls October 23rd, 2013 Banks are in the business of making money – just like every other business – and they do this by providing bank accounts and lending money at a profit. So far so ordinary. They lend to individuals and businesses and most of the time this all goes well, in […]
10 September 2013 Derek Sach inadvertently gave away some of RBS’s trade secrets in this interview with Debtwire’s Mario Oliviero. Sach — who is in charge of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank’s so-called Global Restructuring Group — was interviewed during the Debtwire European Forum in London’s Dorchester Hotel on 16 October 2012. Sach, who joined RBS from […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Yorkshire Post Date: March 1st, 2013 AS the Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester toured the broadcasters’ studios yesterday, he kept repeating the same mantras. He is “fixing RBS”; it is going from an “okay company” to being a “really good bank”; and “RBS will be ready to be privatised […]