peterms Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Good old bankers. Just when you need something to rescue you from the utter tedium of a 20-something female royal astonishingly, incredibly, unutterably being physically able to conceive, here comes one more arse in a long procession of arses. The former chief executive of HBOS has told members of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards that he sold two thirds of his shares in bank in the two years before its near collapse. Sir James Crosby also admitted that lending by bankers at HBOS was “incompetent” after a heated exchange in which he was challenged on at least 15 separate occasions by Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Commission. Sir James earned nearly £8m while chief executive of the bank he brought to life by stewarding the merger of Halifax with Bank of Scotland. He retired on in the middle of 2006 on an index linked pension of £570,000, Commission members were told. Excuse me? Can we at least have the word "earned" in inverted commas in these stories? As in, he "earned" nearly £8m a year while crashing the bank. Just for accuracy. ... Sir James’s positions at the heart of the financial establishment have become increasingly controversial. He was Gordon Brown’s banking advisor and a director of the Financial Service Authority. His role at the regulator is now being investigated to see whether he had “undue influence” in the oversight of HBoS as part of a planned report into the bank’s demise. Sir James’ successor Andy Hornby later described events at the bank as “appalling” before the Commission. Mr Hornby subsequently landed a £1m a year role as chief executive of Boots which he left after less than a year. He is now the boss of Coral’s, the bookmaker. Scary stuff. Who are these incompetent fuckwits who grasp massive salaries while managing about as effectively as a child in a sweetshop? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted December 6, 2012 Share Posted December 6, 2012 I see Starbucks have generously decided to pay £10m in tax annually. They've also decided to cut paid lunch breaks, sick leave and maternity benefits for their staff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 I see Starbucks have generously decided to pay £10m in tax annually. To pay or prepay. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Trots, Or to take umbrage against this sea of troublers and by prepaying stump them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 I see Starbucks have generously decided to pay £10m in tax annually. They've also decided to cut paid lunch breaks, sick leave and maternity benefits for their staff. It's quite astonishing. Despite having massive resources and all sorts of professional advice available, they handled the parliamentary committee dreadfully, then both demonstrate guilt and confirm they see tax as voluntary by making this announcement, then demoralise their staff in this way. It will be a case study for generations of PR and marketing students. On a par with Ratners. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Commie rag attacks our fine Chancellor. ...For a time, Osborne, who hails from the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, appeared to be an ill-informed aristocratic dilettante posing as an economic authority. Now, he has revealed himself as a cynical and cruel politician, who, in order to distract attention from the failure of his policies, is heaping more financial misery on the poor. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Banks are too big to prosecute. The largest banks have become too big to prosecute because of the impact criminal charges would have on confidence in them, Britain’s most senior bank regulator has admitted. In a variant of the “too big to fail” problem, Andrew Bailey, chief executive designate of the Prudential Regulation Authority, said bringing a legal action against a major financial institution raised “very difficult questions”. Mr Bailey told The Daily Telegraph that some banks had grown too large to prosecute. “It would be a very destabilising issue. It’s another version of too important to fail,” he said, “Because of the confidence issue with banks, a major criminal indictment, which we haven’t seen and I’m not saying we are going to see… this is not an ordinary criminal indictment,” he said. His comments come days after HSBC’s record $1.9bn (£1.2bn) settlement with the US authorities over money-laundering linked to drug-trafficking. US assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer said of the decision not to prosecute: “In this day and age we have to evaluate that innocent people will face very big consequences if you make a decision.” Swiss bank UBS is also reported to be close to paying $1bn to settle British and US investigations into claims it attempted to rig key interbank lending rates. A recent spate of settlements have raised concerns banks are effectively buying immunity from past misdeeds. “If you get caught with your hand in the till you go to jail, but if you’re a big bank and you’re caught breaking the law it seems that all that happens is you’re fined and told you’ll go to jail if you do it again,” said Rosie Sharpe, at campaign group Global Witness. Barclays is the only bank, so far, to have admitted its involvement in attempts to rig key Libor rates. This week, three former traders were arrested by British police in connection with a Serious Fraud Office investigation into rate-rigging. None of the men have been charged. Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to reach a settlement over Libor allegations within the next couple of months. On Thursday, George Osborne dismissed the idea of breaking up RBS, saying he was “not sure the gains outweigh the disruption”. So if they are too big to prosecute, and Osborne aims to prevent them being broken up, we can only conclude that he is content that when they break the law, they should not be prosecuted. Instead fines will be levied. The cost of these will be met by shareholders and customers. What was that, George? We're all in this together? An alternative: prosecute the individuals responsible for these criminal acts, including, and especially, those at the top. Use the Proceeds of Crime Act to take away the money they have personally acquired from these acts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PauloBarnesi Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Sad to see the Guardian & Observer are cutting staff before Christmas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drat01 Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Sad to see the Guardian & Observer are cutting staff before Christmas. Where are the cuts being made Paul? On my Ipad I have been looking at the online copies of various newspapers from the Metro through to the Mirror and some of the "broadsheets". You wonder how much these types of publications, i.e. online rather than print, will impact on jobs within the Newspaper industry? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PauloBarnesi Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Journalists mainly; Guardian & Observer have been shedding jobs for the last five or so, especially the Observer. Hard to see it surviving more than a year. The Guardian have a model that the print will survive long enough for the web/tablet/device version to make money. Its harder and harder to see that working. All the newspaper/publishing groups are hurting, and its not helped by management being overpaid for effectively failing. The Guardian has long been subsidised by other interests in the Guardian Media Group, like Autotrader, but online advertising has killed that as a cash cow. Advertising revenues are in free fall. Freelance journalists have seen rates tumble. Over in book publishing Penguin have just merged with Random House. Not sure what that means for consumers, but not good for a lot of writers. The whole market is so focussed on block buster authors who get paid huge advances. Some successful, some like politicians often sell a couple of hundred books, whilst being paid millions. Yet its also a time of opportunity; its so much cheaper & easier to publish if you want to Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 ...not helped by management being overpaid for effectively failing... Some of the figures banded about for the Ginger Witch's severance would appear to back you up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PauloBarnesi Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Some of the figures banded about for the Ginger Witch's severance would appear to back you up. I think its more those who have bonuses when circulation/revenue are going down... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Journalists mainly; Guardian & Observer have been shedding jobs for the last five or so, especially the Observer. Hard to see it surviving more than a year. The Guardian have a model that the print will survive long enough for the web/tablet/device version to make money. Its harder and harder to see that working. All the newspaper/publishing groups are hurting... Also see speculation that Times/Sunday Times may merge, following 40% drop in Times circulation and removal of editor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drat01 Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Journalists mainly; Guardian & Observer have been shedding jobs for the last five or so, especially the Observer. Hard to see it surviving more than a year. The Guardian have a model that the print will survive long enough for the web/tablet/device version to make money. Its harder and harder to see that working. All the newspaper/publishing groups are hurting, and its not helped by management being overpaid for effectively failing. The Guardian has long been subsidised by other interests in the Guardian Media Group, like Autotrader, but online advertising has killed that as a cash cow. Advertising revenues are in free fall. Freelance journalists have seen rates tumble. Over in book publishing Penguin have just merged with Random House. Not sure what that means for consumers, but not good for a lot of writers. The whole market is so focussed on block buster authors who get paid huge advances. Some successful, some like politicians often sell a couple of hundred books, whilst being paid millions. Yet its also a time of opportunity; its so much cheaper & easier to publish if you want to Re Penguin I have been doing some work with Pearsons so it's interesting to see how that develops now. The newspaper thing is interesting because the format of the Metro and the Mirror for example is pretty much the same as what you pick up on the high street each morning. The Mirror is free at the moment on the IPad but I wonder what price point they will put on it in the future, the metro will obviously remain free (I am assuming). It's interesting because the "thirst" for news is still very strong it's just how people now receive it that is changing enormously. With Twitter and the Internet in general the Papers reporting what is in fact 24 hour old news loses it's appeal so they are more for background news now? As for the future and books, I see my 1 1/2 year old grandkids and they already know and can use things such as Ipad's to look at "books" - will they become a near paperless generation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PauloBarnesi Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Pearson as a publishing group are doing well I would guess; FT and Economist are doing well. Penguin a shadow of the great days of Sir Allen Lane, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner et al... People expect news to be free now; some people still willing to pay for analysis which is the main thing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted December 15, 2012 Share Posted December 15, 2012 Prince Charles's £700m estate accused of tax avoidance Gawd bless 'em. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 15, 2012 Share Posted December 15, 2012 Prince Charles's £700m estate accused of tax avoidance Gawd bless 'em. Love the picture with that article. Tax umbrella...geddit... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 19, 2012 Share Posted December 19, 2012 This is just astonishing. New Bank of England Governor to be given £250,000 accommodation allowance, on top of his pay. £5,000 a week for accommodation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Pangloss Posted December 19, 2012 Share Posted December 19, 2012 This is just astonishing. New Bank of England Governor to be given £250,000 accommodation allowance, on top of his pay. £5,000 a week for accommodation. It's the product of the perverse 'incentives' thinking of pop-microeconomists. People in top positions need to have the earth moved for them in order to attract the 'talent' and to ensure that they are 'productive', for those much lower down the ladder productivity can only be boosted if they are paid a subsistence level income and have no employment protection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 29, 2012 Share Posted December 29, 2012 Two contrasting responses to people involved in the financial crash. Iceland jails fraudsters. We give a knighthood to the useless arse who was supposed to regulate the banks while they brought everything crashing down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted December 29, 2012 Share Posted December 29, 2012 With Twitter and the Internet in general the Papers reporting what is in fact 24 hour old news loses it's appeal so they are more for background news now? I think it's more a case of buying the papers (well, the broadsheet types) for the analysis of the information, rather than the raw information itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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