There are two different universes at Westminster, completely disconnected. One is about Hester who has sacked thousands and still presides over RBS languishing at a share price only half of what taxpayers paid for in the bailout, but who has already on top of his £550,000 salary (£10,575 a week) gained £11m in bonuses and […]
Posts Tagged ‘RBS’
As Hester still gets £6m bonuses, the utterly destitute lose Social Fund
Feb 1st, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Capping bankers’ bonuses: is that a promise, Ed?
Jan 31st, 2012 by David Osler.Getting one banker voluntarily to forego one bonus, one time, is the easy bit. But taking on the entrenched enrichissez vous ethos that pervades the financial sector will not be achieved by moral suasion alone. Don’t get me wrong, Ed Miliband has handled the Simon Hester affair in a manner that compensates – well, ever […]
The million pound benefit cap
Jan 25th, 2012 by David Osler.I did realise that Asda sold shedloads of baked beans and breakfast cereal, but until this morning I did not know that the UK wing of Wal-Mart had moved into the market for economic indicators as well. But thanks to Retail Week, I am now aware of something called the Asda Income Tracker, which measures discretionary […]
The postmodern payday lender
Jan 22nd, 2012 by Carl Packman.Recently it was revealed by McKinsey, the consultancy, that the UK debt to GDP ratio stood at 507% in the middle of 2011. Robert Peston reminds us that this is up from 487% of GDP in the second quarter of 2008, and, incredibly, from around 300% in 2003 – before the credit boom. Only Japan is more […]
Burglars get jail, Goodwin gets a £342,500 pension. Why?
Dec 13th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.RBS crashed in 2008, costing taxpayers £45.5bn to bail it out. The FSA (Financial Services Authority) report published today (482 pages long!) indicts everyone – Blair, Brown and Balls for insisting on ‘light-touch regulation’ (i.e. the bank could do whatever it wanted), Cameron and Osborne for demanding even less regulation, and itself – the FSA […]
£2bn in profit but RBS keeps on sacking
Nov 10th, 2011 by Newsdesk.Bailed-out bank Royal Bank of Scotland is back in the black and lending again – but still continues to sack their own workers. The 83 per cent state-owned bank posted third-quarter pre-tax profits of £2 billion last week, following a £678 million loss earlier this year and a £1.6bn loss in 2010.
RBS bail out: Not again. This time, nationalise
Oct 7th, 2011 by Richard Murphy.The FT warns this morning that there are widespread fears the the government will have to bail out RBS, again. RBS passed the so-called European stress test in July, but that test failed to take into account the likely failure of Greek and other debt. Now that failure is likely and the EU is demanding new stress tests then RBS […]
Lloyds-TSB and RBS could be the basis of a National Investment Bank
Sep 7th, 2011 by Jon Trickett.The economy is stagnating and is clearly in deep trouble. The latest figures show the UK economy has grown by just 0.2% in the nine months since George Osborne announced his Comprehensive Spending Review that set out a huge package of cuts. There is turbulence on the stock markets in part, at least, because of […]
Southern Cross links exposed with Qatar, RBS & Goldman Sachs
Jun 16th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The story behind Southern Cross that is slowly being exposed gets worse by the hour. We now know from research by the GMB, which represents nearly 11,000 staff employed by Southern Cross, that up to half of the properties at the 753 care homes were acquired by a company called NHP, of which the ultimate […]