RBS Shareholders Want Goodwin In The Dock

It seems that reports last week of a settlement being agreed between RBS and shareholders, thus negating the expected court appearance of a.o. Fred Goodwin, were premature.

The FT reports that the RBS Shareholders Action Group, which represents thousands of individual investors, secured a £2m deal with high net worth funders on Monday night, taking their total funding pot to about £7m to cover the cost of the trial, according to shareholder Neil Mitchell.

Mr Mitchell said that the claim is “now fully funded” and that “claimants are willing to proceed to trial”, which is set to begin on Wednesday.

It seems the desire to see Goodwin take the stand outweighs mere monetary gain.   A number of investors recently told the Financial Times they were unwilling to settle because they wanted to see Goodwin, who was stripped of his knighthood in 2012, held to account and for the “truth” to emerge.

RBS Reaches £200M Settlement

RBS has reached a last-minute deal worth about £200 million with thousands of investors who claim they were misled during the bank's 2008 rights issue shortly before a government bailout wiped out its share price.

In a letter to shareholders released Monday, the RBoS Shareholders Action Group recommended accepting the deal for 82 pence per share, below its previous damages range of 92 pence per share to 234 pence per share.

The group is the last of five sets of shareholders still pursuing claims that the bank misled investors with its £12 billion rights issue during the 2008 financial crisis, before the £45 billion government bailout wiped out RBS' share price. A trial had been set to begin in late May but was repeatedly postponed after RBS made the 82 pence per share offer on May 20.

Law360UK quotes the shareholder group's letter:

"Until this offer was made, we were not satisfied that previous offers proposed by the bank were close enough to what may be considered an acceptable amount, bearing in mind our legal team's advice as to the true merits of the case.

In contrast, we did consider that the offer of 82p per share, being almost double that of the bank's previous offer, to be worth serious consideration."

This of course means that Fred Goodwin will not be appearing in court.

Fred GoodwinTo Appear In Court

Reuters reports that Fred "The Shred" Goodwin (ex boss of RBS and ex knight of the realm) will appear before disgruntled investors in court next week.

He will become the first senior banker in Britain to be challenged in court over his role in the financial crisis.

A civil trial brought by thousands of RBS investors opens on Monday, alleging the banks' shareholders were misled by Goodwin and other former executives over the bank's financial health ahead of a £12BN cash call in 2008.

Don't expect any dramatic revelations though!

Fred The Shred and The Round Topped Filing Cabinets

The Telegraph reports that Fred Goodwin, erstwhile CEO of RBS, was so obsessed with tidiness and so irritated with piles of paper on filing cabinets that he ordered thousands of custom-made round-topped storage units to be rolled out across the bank.

A senior manager told Iain Martin, the author of Making it Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy being published next week.

“Somewhere in a warehouse are thousands of old flat-top RBS filing cabinets that were not Fred-compliant.” 

In pre RBS days as chief executive of Clydesdale Bank, Goodwin apparently interrupted a meeting to take a call from his mother who had seen a cigarette butt left on the steps of the bank’s headquarters in Glasgow. Goodwin immediately arranged to have the butt removed.

Sadly this obsessive attention to detail didn't manifest itself in the more "mundane" activities of the bank such as credit, risk and how much is lent and to whom.

Cable Calls For Decision on Fred Goodwin

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, is less than pleased that action has yet to be taken by Scottish prosecutors against Fred "the shred" Goodwin (the former CEO of RBS) and other senior directors of RBS for their role in its demise.

The Telegraph reports that Cable has written to Lord Wallace, the Government’s chief legal adviser in Scotland, demanding to know when a decision will be made on whether to ban the former bankers from sitting on company boards.

Cable first asked Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to consider prosecutions in January 2012.

The irony being of course, despite Cable's desire for speed, if a decision to prosecute was taken the trial would be lengthy and extremely complex. Any successful prosecution would then be appealed, and the resulting quagmire of appeals and counter appeals/hearings would take years to resolve, not to mention cost a small fortune.

The question that Cable needs to ask himself is will such a lengthy prosecution really serve the public interest?

A cynic might argue that Cable is playing to the gallery.

RBS and Fred Goodwin Sued For £2.4BN

An RBS Action Group has been set up by 7,400 private shareholders and 80 institutional ones (including NatWest Stockbrokers - part of RBS) to sue Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and its former directors including ex CEO Fred Goodwin for £2.4BN.

The claim states that RBS misled investors in the prospectus for its £12BN rights issue to fund the takeover of the Dutch bank ABN Amro.

Mike Neill, chairman of the action group, is also less than impressed with the FSA whitewash of the sorry affair (as is everyone else!).

Arise Mr Fred Goodwin

Mr Fred Goodwin (ex CEO of RBS) has been stripped of his knighthood.

He joins a distinguished hall of fame of those who have lost their "K", including:

- Benito Mussolini
- Robert Mugabe
- Anthony Blunt
- Nicolae Ceausescu

The removal of the "K" of course does nothing to improve the fortunes of RBS.

Going Going Gong - Fred Goodwin To Lose K?

"Sir" Fred the Shred Goodwin, disgraced ex CEO of RBS, may be stripped of his knighthood.

The Forfeiture Committee is looking into whether they can strip him of it, even though he has not been charged or convicted of a criminal offence.

All well and good.

However, the real question that should be asked is why the hell was he knighted in the first place?

BIS To Prosecute Sir Fred Goodwin?

Not everyone is as content and as passive as the Financial Services Authority (FSA) when it comes to the RBS debacle and the stewardship of Fred "the Shred" Goodwin and other members of the board.

The Telegraph reports that the head of the Insolvency Service at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), which is already investigating whether RBS's former directors could face civil charges, has asked his legal team to check the criminal allegations too.

The FSA report report into the collapse of RBS noted that:

 

"RBS appeared uncertain of its capital position at critical times.

 

So, at best, compliance was only established on a retrospective basis."

 
In theory this is a breach of the Companies Act, which states that directors must be able to "disclose [their company's] financial position with reasonable accuracy at any time".

The website of BIS says it "often" prosecutes "malpractice by company directors in relation to the keeping and preservation of company accounting records".

Penalties are "punishable by a maximum penalty of 2-10 years imprisonment and/or a fine."

How embarrassing for the FSA, if BIS launches a criminal prosecution.

The FSA's Report Into RBS

The long awaited, and much delayed, report by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) into the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) near collapse has finally been issued.

The FSA concludes there were “underlying deficiencies in RBS management governance and culture which made it prone to make poor decisions”.

The report highlights that Sir Fred Goodwin (the then CEO) lobbied to have a warning letter from the FSA altered, to remove references to the deterioration in his relationship with the FSA along with the FSA's concerns over RBS’s commercial property lending.

Incredibly only 6 members of the FSA were overseeing RBS in August 2007 (when it went ahead with the disastrous "dule diligence light" takeover of ABN Amro).

Lord Turner, chairman of the FSA, attempts to explain why, despite these failings, “no-one has been punished” for this failure of governance and oversight:

 

“The fact that no individual has been found legally responsible for the failure begs the question: if action cannot be taken under existing rules, should not the rules be changed for the future.”

Blaming the "rules" is not sufficient excuse for inaction, given that the governance of RBS clearly failed on a spectacular level and that the oversight of RBS by the FSA was woefully inadequate.

Why is the FSA still in existence?

Taking The Biscuit

The Telegraph reports that Sir Fred "The Shred" Goodwin was once so incensed at being served a pink biscuit with his tea, that he wrote an email (entitled "Rogue Biscuit") about it threatening catering staff with disciplinary action.

The incident is highlighted in a new book to be published on 5 September, by Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi, called "Masters of Nothing: How the crash will happen again unless we understand human nature".

Sex

It seems that successful men are driven by many demons, that would appear to be the conclusion to be drawn from the public downfalls of Sir Fred "the Shred" Goodwin (ex head of RBS) and Dominique Strausss-Kahn (ex head of the IMF).

Sir Fred had in place, until yesterday, a "super injunction" that forbade the mention of him even being a banker. However, following disclosures made in the House of Lords yesterday about his affair with a senior colleague, the terms of the injunction were varied. Mr Justice Tugendhat, sitting at the High Court, varied the injunction to allow reporting of Sir Fred's name, but not details of the alleged relationship or the name of the colleague said to be involved.

As to why the affair is so important rests not with the affair itself per se, but the fact that RBS has a code of conduct that would have required Sir Fred to tell the board of the affair, lest there be a conflict of interest.

It is not yet clear as to whether he told the board, or whether the affair itself may have distracted him during a critical time in the bank's operations.

The FSA has been asked to investigate. However, given the mess that they have made so far wrt their last investigation (yet to be reported) into the collapse of RBS, any FSA investigation is likely to produce nothing of any value.

In other news, quite by coincidence, the IMF has published its code of conduct (which cover "personal relationships").

Human beings, no matter how successful, all share one common characteristic; we are all very flawed.

FSA - F*cking Useless!

From today's Telegraph:

"Senior sources close to the FSA said that the report on RBS, originally promised by Lord Turner, the FSA chairman, in March, was now delayed indefinitely.

The FSA is now aware that the delay is doing it damage and wants to stave off criticism that it has not met its own deadline.

The sources said that such was the legal complexity trying to produce a report that would be cleared by RBS lawyers – fearful of possible legal action in the US – the project now needed a fundamental rethink."

I stand by what I wrote on 7 March 2011:

"The publication of the long awaited whitewash report by the FSA into RBS, originally intended to be published this March, has been delayed until at least April.

Unsurprisingly no one is happy with this delay, as it clearly makes the report look like even more of a whitewash and the FSA all but complicit in that whitewash.

The Sunday Telegraph adds weight to the increasing clamour for the FSA to come clean about this whitewash, by reporting that many current and former RBS managers have not been contacted by the FSA as part of its "investigation", despite their intimate knowledge of how the bank had been run.

Why would that be?

Does the FSA not know how to conduct an investigation, or was it trying to "investigate lite"?

Even more damning is the the Sunday Telegraph's assertion that Sir Fred "The Shred" Goodwin was only interviewed once by FSA officials, and even then only on broad issues and not the specifics of the bank's failure.

It seems that the FSA did not have "proper processes", according to one former senior Treasury adviser interviewed by the Telegraph.

The beleaguered and failed regulatory body, the FSA, has managed through further ineptitude to dig itself (as if that could be possible) deeper into the mire.

Having steadfastly refused to publish its report into RBS (the report that exonerated the directors and company of any wrongdoing), it then agreed (under intense pressure) to publish a heavily redacted version of the report.

Good enough?

Not really:

1 The report will be heavily redacted.

2 It won't be published until at least April.

The FSA really doesn't get it, and is demonstrating why it has become an irrelevancy.

Impressed so far?

I'm not!

However, this litany of incompetence does not not end here. The FSA exoneration of the RBS board may in fact be nonsense, and that the investigation nothing more than an incompetent whitewash.

For why?

WikiLeaks have published a cable that summaries a meeting between Sir Philip Hampton, the new chairman of RBS, and 3 US politicians.

During the meeting Sir Philip allegedly noted that he thought that the previous RBS had failed to live up to their "fiduciary duties", and did not conduct adequate due diligence before buying part of ABN Amro in 2007.

That hardly fits in with the FSA whitewash that exonerates the previous board.

Could someone please tell me why the FSA is still in existence? "

ROFLOL!

John Hemming MP is quoted by the Telegraph:

"In a secret hearing, Fred Goodwin has obtained a super-injunction, preventing him being identified, [even] as a banker."

Super injunctions prevent the press from reporting that an injunction has been obtained.

FSA Dithers and Delays

The publication of the long awaited whitewash report by the FSA into RBS, originally intended to be published this March, has been delayed until at least April.

Unsurprisingly no one is happy with this delay, as it clearly makes the report look like even more of a whitewash and the FSA all but complicit in that whitewash.

The Sunday Telegraph adds weight to the increasing clamour for the FSA to come clean about this whitewash, by reporting that many current and former RBS managers have not been contacted by the FSA as part of its "investigation", despite their intimate knowledge of how the bank had been run.

Why would that be?

Does the FSA not know how to conduct an investigation, or was it trying to "investigate lite"?

Even more damning is the the Sunday Telegraph's assertion that Sir Fred "The Shred" Goodwin was only interviewed once by FSA officials, and even then only on broad issues and not the specifics of the bank's failure.

It seems that the FSA did not have "proper processes", according to one former senior Treasury adviser interviewed by the Telegraph.

The beleaguered and failed regulatory body, the FSA, has managed through further ineptitude to dig itself (as if that could be possible) deeper into the mire.

Having steadfastly refused to publish its report into RBS (the report that exonerated the directors and company of any wrongdoing), it then agreed (under intense pressure) to publish a heavily redacted version of the report.

Good enough?

Not really:

1 The report will be heavily redacted.

2 It won't be published until at least April.

The FSA really doesn't get it, and is demonstrating why it has become an irrelevancy.

Impressed so far?

I'm not!

However, this litany of incompetence does not not end here. The FSA exoneration of the RBS board may in fact be nonsense, and that the investigation nothing more than an incompetent whitewash.

For why?

WikiLeaks have published a cable that summaries a meeting between Sir Philip Hampton, the new chairman of RBS, and 3 US politicians.

During the meeting Sir Philip allegedly noted that he thought that the previous RBS had failed to live up to their "fiduciary duties", and did not conduct adequate due diligence before buying part of ABN Amro in 2007.

That hardly fits in with the FSA whitewash that exonerates the previous board.

Could someone please tell me why the FSA is still in existence?

FSA Humiliated

Unsurprisingly the FSA's attempt to hide the details of its 18 month "investigation" into the near collapse of RBS, via a pathetic one paragraph "a series of bad decisions was made" fig leaf, has brought down upon it the scorn it so richly deserves.

Sir Fred "the shred" Goodwin is said to be perfectly happy for the report to be published (not that his approval or disapproval needs to be sought), and indeed George Osborne is pushing for the report to be published. RBS is, after all, a public asset.

However, the FSA are defiantly sticking to its guns and refusing to publish until a "legal view" could be established that it could do so within the exemptions of the law.

A nice "excuse" clause such as that may well be appropriate for certain private organisations. However, as noted, RBS is a public asset it is in the public's interest to see the results of the FSA's labours.

Quite why the FSA is so determined to keep the report hidden from public view is causing many people to wonder as to whether it is protecting RBS, or itself and its investigation, from rigorous scrutiny.

Either way the FSA, by this shameful episode, have demonstrated that it has no future.

FSA Ridiculed

Unsurprisingly the FSA's pathetic refusal to publish details of its investigation into RBS (which let management off the hook, and only mildly rebuked them by saying that the near collapse of RBS was the result of a series of "bad decisions") has received the scorn that it so rightly deserves.

The Telegraph quotes Lord Oakeshott, a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman:

"We cannot learn the lessons of the worst corporate crash in British history if we can't see the evidence."

Lord Oakshott went on to say:

"Most people, taxpayers and City experts alike, simply will not accept there was no failure of corporate governance on the part of the management, board and regulator of RBS."

One wonders if the FSA's reluctance to publish the details of its investigation is designed to save the blushes of the ex board members of RBS, or to save itself and its pathetic report/"findings" from rigorous scrutiny.

Why is the FSA still in existence?

If someone has a copy of the report, I suggest that they leak it to WikiLeaks (currently accessible via this domain http://213.251.145.96)

A "Series of Bad Decisions"

The FSA has announced that it will not take any enforcement action against the ex CEO of RBS, Fred "The Shred" Goodwin; the FSA has now closed its 18-month probe into the conduct of RBS executives, the acquisition of ABN Amro in 2007 and a 2008 rights offering.

The Telegraph quotes the FSA:

"The review confirmed that RBS made a series of bad decisions in the years immediately before the financial crisis, most significantly the acquisition of ABN AMRO.

The review concluded that these bad decisions were not the result of a lack of integrity by any individual and we did not identify any instances of fraud or dishonest activity.

The competence of RBS individuals can, and will, be taken into account in any future applications made by them to work at FSA regulated firms.."

The last sentence is the FSA's attempt to add "stones" to their statement of the "bleedin' obvious", namely that "a series of bad decisions" had been made.

The FSA won't disclose details of its investigation, they expect people to blithely accept their opinion and move on.

Not really very much to show for 18 months of "investigation"!

Did not our government, during the run up to the election, say that they were going to shut down the FSA?

Sir Fred's Private Meeting

Sir Fred "The Shred" Goodwin, the disgraced ex head of RBS, has attempted to avoid publicity by requesting that a meeting called for today by the FSA be held in the office of his lawyers rather than at the FSA's own offices.

Clearly, as with RBS's financial strategy during Goodwin's tenure, that idea has come rather unstuck as the media have picked up the story.

The adverse publicity about the meeting has now called into question the actual timing, lest there be any "naughty" journalists waiting outside the offices keen to ask Goodwin a question.

Ad to whether this meeting actually yields anything tangible (aside from a slap on the wrist fine for Goodwin) remains to be seen:

1 RBS is now effectively owned by the taxpayer, yet the banking sector itself has no reformed and continues to pay itself very generously and trade in high risk derivatives despite bringing this country close to financial collapse.

2 The FSA is likely to be shut down by the government.

3 Sir Fred appears to be enjoying the fruits of his labours. He recently met with the Duke of York (one assume that Fergie didn't arrange that), and has bought £3.5M "fortress" in Edinburgh.

Let us trust that the banking sector is reformed in time, before we are hit with the next crisis which will most assuredly bankrupt this nation.

RBS Slips Deeper Into The Mire IV

Finishing off what has been a truly appalling week for the wreck of the once proud Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), it announced losses today of £1.5BN for Q3 of this year.

Bad debt write offs (£10.8BN) are over three times that of the same period last year (when they were a "mere" £2.7BN).

RBS "hope" to return to profit in 2011.

Sir Fred "The Shred" Goodwin has certainly left a legacy, I wonder if this is the one he dreamed of?

Quite why some his acolytes still hold senior positions in RBS, and are to receive bonuses (albeit deferred) remains a mystery.