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What today’s Libor settlement says about Royal Bank of Scotland

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 7th, 2013 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

How to deal with the Libor riggers

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 […]

February 6th, 2013 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Britain’s corporate failures invite a governance revolution

November 18th, 2012 Image: WilliamBanzai7 The bigwigs of the City of London, corporate governance ‘gurus’ in asset-management firms and leading figures from FTSE-100 companies have a penchant for patting themselves on the back over the brilliance of the corporate governance framework they have erected over the past two decades. The UK Corporate Governance Code (formerly the Combined Code of […]

November 18th, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Book review: Going for broke

By Ian Fraser Published: Scottish Review of Books Date November 17th, 2012 It was intended as a memorial to the Scots who died in the Napoleonic Wars. But it wasn’t long before the incomplete replica of the Parthenon on Calton Hill was labelled ‘Edinburgh’s disgrace’. This was because the so-called National Monument was left half-finished, with […]

November 17th, 2012 | Posted in Article Library | Read More »

Illusion of unassailability leads to fresh outbreak of ‘mad banker disease’

November 6th, 2012 By Gordon Neave Picture: The Economist During the late 1980s and early 1990s British bankers changed for the worse. Having spent most of the past three centuries as financial herbivores — solid, reliable and rational members of the community — they metamorphosed into wild, hungry carnivores. Fuelled by commissions, bonuses and greed, […]

November 6th, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Idea banks can be trusted to police themselves ‘one of most dangerous of modern times’

October 20th, 2012 (updated October 31st, 2012) On January 1st, 2008, some bright sparks at the FSA decided it was appropriate to grant Advanced Internal Ratings Based (AIRB) status to both Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS. In doing so, the Canary Wharf-based regulator was effectively giving the two Edinburgh-headquartered banks carte blanche to calculate the […]

October 27th, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Have we really rebuilt the Royal Bank of Scotland?

By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 21st, 2012 Stephen Hester and Sir Philip Hampton may be in bullish mood, but is RBS as strong as they claim? By Ian Fraser (Image: The Sun) THE chairman and chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland had something of a spring in their step last week. The […]

October 21st, 2012 | Posted in Article Library | Read More »

Stephen Hester renounces Milton Friedman’s doctrine of greed

October 2nd, 2012 Speaking to an audience of students and finance industry insiders at the London School of Economics yesterday, Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester renounced the Friedman Doctrine that has done so much damage to our economy and society since the 1970s. Hester said that banks and other companies have been […]

October 2nd, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Net closes on Royal Bank of Scotland’s property shenanigans

October 1st, 2012 (updated from July 6th, 2012) (revised October 8th, 2012) Today, Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester used a speech at the London School of Economics to call for a new “compact” between banks and society. With his industry engulfed in scandal and widely despised by customers and the general public, Hester […]

October 1st, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

Simon Carswell: Inside Ireland’s, and probably the world’s, worst bank

September 24th, 2012 I’m half way through Simon Carswell’s Anglo Republic: Inside the bank that broke Ireland, and it’s a gripping read. In the book Carswell, finance correspondent of the Irish Times, describes how, from small beginnings, Anglo Irish Bank became a highly leveraged bet on the future of Ireland’s increasingly unsustainable property market, became a […]

September 24th, 2012 | Posted in Blog | Read More »

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