RBS
Time for new leadership at Barclays and HSBC – and a new name at RBS
After a dull interlude, the big banks in their annual results season look a bit more interesting again. First to…
Can Hammond’s Budget make business feel better about Brexit?
‘Uncertainty is draining investment from the UK, with Brexit having a negative impact on eight in ten businesses,’ says Carolyn…
Unilever’s botched plan to quit London leaves it open to hostile bids
Unilever’s abandonment of plans to scrap its Anglo-Dutch corporate structure and leave London is a huge embarrassment for chief executive…
Running a bank’s tough. That’s no reason to start handing capital back
A mixed bag of annual results from the big banks. RBS, still 73 per cent owned by the taxpayer, recorded…
Scrapping RBS’s toxic brand should be a step towards a final break-up
Royal Bank of Scotland is at last about to dump the ‘RBS’ logotype promoted by its fallen chieftain Fred Goodwin,…
Portrait of the week
Home Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, prepared a paper on the four areas of concern between Britain…
RBS’s note from a crashing plane: wild headline-grabbing or wise advice?
Should anyone take investment advice from Royal Bank of Scotland, the institution which so misread markets before the crash that…
Cheer up: we’re robust enough to withstand a shock from China
Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom…
Portrait of the week
Home Tom Hayes, aged 35, a former City trader who rigged the Libor rates daily for nearly four years while…
The Libor trader’s long stretch is a big message to the banking world
Fourteen years is a long stretch. The punishment imposed on former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes for his role…
Something useful for your Budget, George: fast-track approval for challenger banks
In my Yorkshire town of Helmsley the NatWest branch, originally an outpost of Beckett & Co of Leeds, has closed…
This oil price rise is a blip, not a spike – but it’s still a timely reminder to get fracking
‘Iraq turmoil sends crude oil prices to nine-month high’ is the sort of headline that used to send shivers down…
Are investment bankers being kicked to death? And should we care – or cheer?
Do we really mean to kill investment banking, or are we trampling it by accident in a fit of righteous…
Investment: Confessions of a share tipper
When I get it right, I shout about it. And when I get it wrong? Well, just between us…
Portrait of the week
Home Britain’s gross domestic product grew by 1.9 per cent last year, the most since 2007, according to the Office…
Ed Balls doesn’t care what you and I think: he’s just tweeting at Labour’s floaters
There were a million people who voted Labour in the 2005 general election but not in 2010, when the party…
Loan survivor
How one small company was nearly squeezed to death by RBS
Portrait of the week
Home Three Police Federation representatives accused of giving misleading accounts of a meeting with Andrew Mitchell over the Plebgate scandal…
A parable of human weakness
Fred Goodwin’s descent from golden boy of British banking to ‘pariah of the decade’ would be the stuff of tragedy…
