BBC Scotland’s Trust Me I’m A Banker, an investigative documentary fronted Mark Daly on which I advised and helped to research, was initially aired on BBC1 Scotland on 11 October 2010.
A sightly amended version of the one hour programme, topped and tailed by Jeremy Vine, was aired as a Panorama on BBC1 across the United Kingdom on 23 December 2010.
I was interviewed on whether the Graeme Shankland / Bank of Scotland Integrated Finance deal — which saw the ownership of a troubled collection of private equity assets amassed by HBOS’s integrated finance team at the peak of the credit bubble transfer to Coller Capital‘s ownership — represented a good deal for taxpayers.
Despite protestations to the contrary from Lloyds Banking Group’s executive director of wholesale banking Truett Tate, the answer is definitely ‘no’.
This is largely because the taxpayer has borne much of the pain in terms of write-downs on the cavalier loans extended by HBOS to fund Graeme Shankland’s buyout spree, while he and his 20-strong team and Coller stand to profit handsomely from past mistakes on which taxpayers are bearing some of the losses.
The Shandland-led team had a part in writing down the value of the private-equity portfolio from £1.4bn to £480m — which becomes the hurdle rate for future success fees and carried interest.
There is more on why the Bank of Scotland Integrated Finance / Coller Capital deal is bad for taxpayers in my article in the Sunday Herald.
- For more on BBC Scotland Investigates’ Trust Me I’m a Banker, on which producer/ director Murdoch Rodgers also worked click here
- Preview article on the documentary from the Sunday Mail
This blog post was published on 23 December 2010
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