By Cat MacLean, Partner & Head of Dispute Resolution
INTRODUCTION
This is clearly a great victory for Mr Carlyle after a long and punishing 7 years. However, when the celebrations are over, the key question that remains to be answered is whether the UK Supreme Court’s decision will have wider implications.
To date, victories by SMEs and individuals against banks have been few and far between. It has, of course, been an uphill battle for property developers and SMEs since the recession first hit, […]
RBS v Carlyle – Where Now?
Why have RBS Bankers Not Been Prosecuted
Voters cannot understand why the bankers who oversaw the collapse of RBS have not been pursued by prosecutors, Vince Cable said last night.
The Business Secretary piled pressure on the authorities to bring Fred Goodwin and other former bosses to account.
A legal report prepared for Mr Cable is understood to have concluded there was ‘prosecutable evidence’ against several of the bank’s executives.
They steered RBS into the biggest corporate disaster in British history, leaving taxpayers with a £45billion bill for its […]
UK retail banks questioned by MPs on fraud levels
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/00095faa-7e24-11e4-b7c3-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3LI7bT9Mk
An influential committee of MPs has asked the UK’s five leading high street banks to report on how they assemble fraud figures, in response to a claim that they understate the numbers by as much as half.
The Treasury select committee was told banks only report fraud if the money lost is irretrievable, neglecting to include large amounts of stolen funds that are recovered.
Andrew Tyrie, chair of the committee, which oversees financial legislation, has asked Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Santander and Royal Bank of Scotland for information about […]
RBS gives 10 executives £5.5m in allowances to sidestep EU bonus cap
Ten top executives at Royal Bank of Scotland have been handed almost £5.5m in shares this year as allowances to sidestep the EU bonus cap.
The latest disclosure to the stock market by the 80% taxpayer-owned bank shows that the 10 received £1.9m in these allowances for the last four months of 2014. These awards followed £3.5m handed out in August, to cover the first eight months of the year.
Only one of the 10 sits on the board: the finance […]
RBS Sorry For ‘Incorrect’ Evidence To MPs
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has apologised for telling MPs that a controversial division of the bank, accused of deliberately closing viable firms, was not seeking to make money from its activities.
The development came to light when the Treasury Select Committee released a series of letters between its chairman Andrew Tyrie and bank chairman Sir Philip Hampton relating to a hearing in June.
The Committee was told then by senior bank directors it was not the case that the Global […]
Judge Takes Pity on RBS Bankers who Committed £3m Fraud
Two RBS bankers have walked away from a £3m property fraud without having to complete jail time because the judge believes they have already “suffered” as they were “embarrassed” by the incident.
Raymond Pask, 54, and his employee Andrew Ratnage, 50, established a series of fake companies in the names of Pask’s relatives so they could apply for mortgages to buy and renovate homes and then sell them for a profit.
The loan applications were submitted to the bankers’ employers so […]
RBS ‘wanted critic Tomlinson’s mortgage back’
A businessman who wrote a government report that criticised RBS has been told he can no longer remain a customer of the bank, Panorama has learned.
In the 2013 report, Lawrence Tomlinson accused RBS of systematically wrecking viable businesses.
And in 2014, RBS deputy chief executive Chris Sullivan told him he would have to take his mortgage, business and personal accounts to another bank.
But RBS said the decision had nothing to do with the critical report.
Mr Tomlinson’s report accused RBS of […]
Years On, Different Scandal, Same Problems
The numbers are once again staggering, the arrogance breathtaking. Yes, it’s another week, another banking scandal. Channel 4 News’ economics editor, Paul Mason, expressed what many felt when he went into something of a rage while reporting on the latest banking scandal from outside the offices of RBS. Mason later explained that the clip that was aired was filmed after he had had time to calm down, so exasperated was he that so little had changed in the last […]
RBS Group Executives’ testimony questioned
Bonuses handed out to senior bosses at Royal Bank of Scotland are facing renewed scrutiny after the chairman of the bailed-out bank apologised for inaccuracies in evidence given to MPs about its restructuring division.
Sir Philip Hampton admitted evidence given by two of the most senior bankers to the Treasury select committee was incorrect. The division is facing accusations about its treatment of small businesses.
The inaccurate evidence was given in June by Derek Sach, who ran the global restructuring group […]
Cable’s Guru scorns RBS ‘mockery’ of small firms
The former government adviser who claimed in a controversial report that Royal Bank of Scotland forced viable businesses to the wall has launched a fresh broadside at the bank after it was forced to issue an apology to the Treasury Select Committee over misleading evidence given by two executives.
Lawrence Tomlinson said the testimony of Derek Sach, the former head of the RBS global restructuring group, and deputy chief executive Chris Sullivan “makes a mockery of both the parliamentary process […]
RBS reputation on the rocks as Blunders continue
A BAD week for Royal Bank of Scotland was rounded off when the taxpayer-backed group was hit by a new computer systems failure and an embarrassing mistake by its number crunchers.
Just 24 hours after the owner of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank was fined £56million for a massive computer failure in 2012, the gremlins struck again.
The latest IT glitch affected customers using credit and debit cards but fortunately was resolved within 90 minutes.
And to pile on the woe for […]
Bankers Escape Justice
Even after PPI, forex and the financial crisis, many of the directors who presided over scandal remain in public life.
There was a time when bank bosses took at face value Ogden Nash’s satirical poem Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer. Not any more. These days most bank executives realise they are different in that their actions can blow up the global economy, bring nations to their knees and impoverish millions.
City watchdogs say they also grasp that global […]
Whistleblower Royal Bank of Scotland escapes Libor fine
Royal Bank of Scotland has escaped €115m of fines for alerting the European commission’s competition watchdog to two attempts to fix the prices of key interest rates.
RBS, which is 81%-owned by the taxpaer, was fined £390m last year for manipulating Libor by regulators in the US and the UK. It was given immunity from one €110m fine after telling the commission it had tried to influence Swiss franc interest rates with JP Morgan. The Wall Street bank was fined […]
Six years after Lehman’s crash, US and UK play out next financial crisis
War game designed to test readiness of central banks as exercise will stress-test new global regulations.
The top financial brass from the Treasuries and central banks of Britain and the US are to take part in a war game, behind closed doors in Washington on Monday, to test how they would handle another Lehman Brothers-style banking crisis .
Six years after the financial earthquake that led to the multibillion-pound taxpayer bailouts of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, the […]
Lloyds and Barclays top bank complaints
New figures show two banks attracted over 56,000 new complaints in first half of this year.
Lloyds Banking Group is the banking group the Financial Ombudsman Service received most complaints about, according to its latest figures, while Barclays generated the highest percentage of complaints per customer.
Between January and June this year, over 30,000 people complained to the Ombudsman about the Lloyds group, which includes Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland. And nearly 27,000 people complained about Barclays.
The Ombudsman is where […]
RBS faces legal action over GRG unit
The Royal Bank of Scotland could face legal action from hundreds of small business owners over its controversial Global Restructuring Group (GRG) division.
According to The Times, 800 companies have approached the RBS GRG Business Action Group to be considered for a group legal action.
The action group has appointed law firm Clyde & Co to review allegations that RBS GRG, which was meant to help firms facing collapse, actually forced viable companies out of business.
The Times said some companies claimed […]
SRA silent over ‘fake’ bank law firm probe
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has received complaints about individual in-house solicitors accused of involvement in sending letters purporting to be from independent law firms, as more banks admitted adopting the practice.
The regulator declined to say whether it will investigate, despite warning in July that in-house solicitors misleading customers in this way would breach the Code of Conduct.
Questions have been raised about the role of in-house legal teams in creating the letters since the Gazette revealed in June that Lloyds […]
RBS CEO Ross McEwan – Deception is Common Industry Practice
Britain’s biggest banks have admitted sending thousands of letters from fake debt collection agencies in a deliberate attempt to intimidate customers into paying up.
In a series of letters to the Commons Treasury committee, several of the biggest names in banking admit they have sent misleading letters to tens of thousands of customers who are struggling to repay their debts. They now face the prospect of a full-scale inquiry by MPs, who have condemned the ‘menacing’ practice. Andrew Tyrie, Tory […]
Banks still committing the same old crimes
Mark Garnier, the Conservative MP for Wyre Forest in Worcestershire, has condemned banks for committing “the same crimes” following the financial crisis, and called for greater empowerment and accountability for frontline staff.
Discussing the £14.5m fine imposed on Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest for “serious failings” in their advised mortgage business by the FCA, Treasury select committee member Mr Garnier said: “They are obviously moving on with this, but it’s truly shocking that banks are still committing the same […]
Bankers’ bonuses – 100 times higher than public sector
Bankers’ bonuses were more than a hundred times higher than public sector workers over the past year and grew at double the rate of those of the average UK worker, official figures have showed.
The average bonus for bankers and insurance workers was £13,300 between May last year to April, while that of public sector workers such as nurses and teachers was the lowest at around £100 on average. The figures are likely to prompt further calls for stricter rules […]
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