Blog
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Lack of competition is the real issue, not early privatisation
Sacking Stephen Hester to facilitate an early privatisation of Royal Bank of Scotland Group has stirred a new media storm but how long will it last? It deserves more than superficial attention. This is a short-sighted political fix which will do the economy and the taxpayer no favours.
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Wanted: an Act of God
According to the FT the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards will this week recommend that bankers’ bonuses be withheld for as long as ten years as a way of making them live with the consequences of their actions. That would be tackling the problem from the wrong end.
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Was HBOS an ethical bank?
On the day that Robert Peston breaks news of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards draft report, I’m on my way to speak to an interesting group of bankers in Dublin. Questions sent in advance may whet the appetite for tonight’s dinner.
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Time for TSB to come home to Scotland?
After the Co-operative Bank pulled out, Lloyds is now to launch 632 branches as a standalone business on the stock market. Could there be an opportunity here for Scotland to regain a bank headquarters?
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Things can’t get worse for Crosby? Oh yes they can!
Life is just not going well for former HBOS chief executive James Crosby. Not only is he about to lose his knighthood and a third of his pension, but he can’t sell his Edinburgh flat, despite dropping the price by £50,000.
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Time for Stevenson to drop his air of injured innocence: he was as much to blame as Crosby
We now know what the price of failure is for the CEO of a wrecked bank. Fred Goodwin at RBS set the tariff: a lost knighthood and a third off the pension. Now James Crosby at HBOS has fallen into line. But what should happen to the chairmen?
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Mrs Thatcher’s legacy: financial deregulation and the credit crunch
Whatever else she might be remembered for – Europe, the Falklands, the poll tax – the raft of financial deregulation Margaret Thatcher’s Government brought about paved the way for a twenty-year boom in financial services, a huge increase in personal and corporate debt and ultimately the crash of 2008.
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The role of bank boards needs to be reassessed
The Parliamentary Commission report repays careful reading, not least for its strident criticism of the board and their habit of self-congratulation rather than rigorous challenge.
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The guilty have been named. Now they must be punished
The significance of the HBOS report from the Parliamentary Commission is not in any new evidence it has uncovered – we always knew why the bank went bust – but in the uncompromising way in which it named the men primarily responsible for bringing it down, chairman Lord Stevenson and chief executives Sir James…
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Cyprus: repeating history’s mistakes
The parents of Cyprus Central Bank Governor Demetriades did their son no favours when they christened him Panicos. If, as seems likely, he loses the job he took up less than a year ago and returns to UK academic life it is not hard to guess what his nickname will be.