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 […]
September 17th, 2012 (Updated 11.25am) (edited Dec 16th 2012) Studiously ignoring the roles of “establishment” figures like Sir James Crosby and Lord Stevenson in the demise of disastrous Edinburgh-based bank HBOS, the Financial Services Authority is seeking to heap all the ordure on the less establishment Peter Cummings. Now I am not suggesting that Cummings is […]
August 11th, 2012 According to a Reuters report earlier, Standard Chartered is this weekend in talks with US regulators with a view to reaching a carefully choreographed settlement along similar lines to the “sweetheart” deal that Barclays reached with the US department of justice for similar Iran-related criminality in August 2010. Reuters says the settlement may […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: July 22nd, 2012 Editorial note: This is a more detailed and complete version of an article published in the Sunday Herald on July 22nd, 2012. Police are poised to press charges against several HBOS bankers and consultants after a two-year investigation into large-scale fraud, money laundering and corruption […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Signet Magazine Date: July 16th, 2012 (minor edits March 28th, 2013) Scottish banking was once renowned for prudential management. Today the association is rather different. Financial journalist Ian Fraser gives his view of events behind the collapse of RBS and HBOS and calls for a Leveson-style inquiry. PDF version of this […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Qfinance Date: June 18th, 2012 I was surprised and exasperated to learn last week that chancellor George Osborne has rubber-stamped the appointment of John Griffith-Jones, the senior partner of KPMG, as chairman-designate of the Financial Conduct Authority, one of the two financial regulators that will take over from the soon-to-be-disbanded FSA. As […]
March 10th, 2012 Yesterday was an extraordinary day in the world of banking. First we had confirmation from Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland that they are doling out obscene sums in bonuses to executives, even as performance flags and share prices plunge. Then we had the ridiculous saga of the IDSA determinations […]
January 18th, 2012 Ian Fraser’s introduction: This blog was written by Golem XIV, a pseudonym for filmmaker and author David Malone. The lies which got us to the purgatory we are in are being told all over again, right now, inside every bank in the Western world. Not by accident but on purpose, by men with […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 18th, 2011 KPMG was already auditing Halifax when the ex-building society merged with Bank of Scotland a decade ago, and the audit firm took over responsibility for auditing HBOS books from September 2001. The firm fulfilled this function until HBOS had to be rescued via a shotgun […]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: July 11th, 2011 Accountancy has changed beyond recognition since the 1970s. At that time the accountancy professor Roy Sidebotham wrote: “There seems to be no limit to the optimism of businessmen… which the growing complexity of the market opens up. The first line of defence of investors and creditors is the […]