Fred Goodwin's knighthood: Alistair Darling leads the backlash

Fellow sharks and bankers' lackeys queue up to empathise with Mr Fred Goodwin ...

Writing in the Times, Darling said: "There is something tawdry about the government directing its fire at Fred Goodwin alone; if it's right to annul his knighthood, what about the honours of others who were involved in RBS and HBOS?" ...

There was support for Goodwin from former Formula One world champion Sir Jackie Stewart, who is a friend of the disgraced former RBS boss, although he said he had not spoken to him since the decision. "He's turned all his phones off." ...

Simon Walker, the director general of the Institute of Directors (IoD), warned that political revelry in the decision risked sparking "anti-business hysteria" ...

Gdn  01 Feb 2012

Greed is good, greed works

Bailed-out RBS spends millions on Washington lobbyists

According to the documents, the bank spent $4.13m from October 2008 to December 2011 on lobbyists as it tried to influence three different areas of legislation.

The bank sought influence over consumer protection ... the amount capital banks must hold as well as demands that banks publish the ratio of the highest paid bankers to average wages ...

The documents, which were released by the US government and list lobbying activity in the US, show the lobbyist, client, amount spent and subject of the lobbying, as per US rules.

Under the parameters of the government's proposed changes to lobbying rules in the UK, released last week as part of a discussion paper, none of the equivalent details will be available in Britain ...

Gdn  27 Jan 2012    Bankocracy Log    Corporate State log    Westminster Sleaze

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves ...

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms.

Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk.

Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records ...

Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens.

Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77.

Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant ...

NYT  26 Jan 2012    China    Neoliberal Consumer Culture    The FYB Dystopia

Hedge Funds Bet on Profits from Greek Debt Talks

For some hedge funds, the fight over interest rates has given them more incentive to push for a breakdown of the proposed plan.

Officially, they are in the same boat as the banks and insurance companies. But in reality their interests are vastly opposed.

"Hedge funds don't need to worry about their public image," one banker says.

Their reputation has already been destroyed. Therefore, they can be relatively cavalier in gambling with the possibility of a Greek bankruptcy ...

Things look different for the hedge funds if an agreement breaks down. In this case, the threat of insolvency exists.

The chance that the bondholders would get their money back would dramatically decrease.

The bonds would have less value than before, and would no longer be worth €30 million, but say just €10 million. And the CDS guarantees would be due.

The hedge funds would, depending on the arrangement of the CDS, receive up to 100 percent of the bonds' nominal value, or €100 million.

Under this scenario, the hedge fund that invested €60 million would get €110 in return - a profit of almost 100 percent ...

As Greece's financial situation worsens, there have also been calls for greater efforts from Athens, which has failed to meet the budgetary and reform targets agreed upon in exchange for aid.     Der Speigel

Der Spiegel  25 Jan 2012    Hedge Funds    The Merkozy Plan    The Third Meltdown

The Social Darwinist EU

Former BP boss earns £12m from Iraqi oil venture

Hayward who left his old employers with a £10m pension pot after the Gulf of Mexico blowout, exercised his rights to a 6.67% stake in the Genel Energy business along with his partners Nat Rothschild and two other executives.

The four Genel backers are entitled to a windfall nudging £160m as they swap their "founder" shares in the Vallares investment vehicle they established in return for ordinary shares in Genel.

Hayward and the other founders of Vallares will not be able to sell their shares until 21 November under a lock-in arrangement ...

Gdn  20 Jan 2012    A 'Greed of Good' Wealth Log

Deepwater Horizon    Peak Oil

Tony Hayward

Executive pay and bonuses

Tesco executive sold shares before profit warning

A senior Tesco executive sold more than £200,000 of shares in the supermarket a week before its first profit warning in 20 years wiped nearly £5bn off its market value.

Noel "Bob" Robbins, the grocer's chief UK operating officer, offloaded 50,000 shares at 404.5p each on 4 January and pocketed £202,255.

By selling them 10 days ago, he made nearly £44,000 more than he would have done had he sold them yesterday ...

Tesco said Mr Robbins, a long-serving employee, had done nothing wrong ...

Another director, Ken Towle ... sold 40,193 Tesco shares at 385.6p on 22 December, earning about £155,000.

However, the firm said these shares represented less than 5 per cent of Mr Towle's holding and were sold for personal reasons ...

Ind  14 Jan 2012    A 'Greed is Good' Wealth Log

Tescopoly

Barclays stockpiles 'losses' to soften tax obligations

The European Banking Authority has estimated that Barclays will have €4bn (£3.3bn) of "deferred tax assets" this year, compared with €5bn at Royal Bank of Scotland, and €7.3bn at Lloyds Banking Group.

Deferred tax assets are highly prized by companies because they can be set against tax claims to reduce the final bill ...

Barclays has run into controversy before over its tax arrangements. Two years ago a whistleblower leaked documents which purported to show that Barclays was using a network of subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg to reduce its tax bill.

Earlier this year, chief executive Bob Diamond was forced to reveal that the bank operated nearly 300 subsidiaries in tax havens and had paid just £113m of corporation tax in the UK in 2009 – a year in which it handed out £3.4bn in bonuses ...

Tel  01 Jan 2012    Bankocracy Log    Tax Dodgers

Barclays 'risks backlash' ...

Lloyds Banking Group's bosses were 'reckless'

In Europe, Juggling Image and Capital

In which the insanity of fractional reserve banking is demonstrated

Stung by souring loans and troubled government bond portfolios, many European banks are being forced by regulators to raise money to build up their cash cushions against future losses ...

... why, then, is Santander still planning to pay its shareholders 2011 dividends worth at least 2 billion euros in cash and even more in stock? ...

To preserve their allure as global brands, while trying to compensate for their battered share prices, big European banks like Santander remain intent on maintaining rich dividend payouts to shareholders.

At the same time, they are selling assets, curbing lending and taking other belt-tightening measures to satisfy regulators’ demands for more capital ...

The European Banking Authority, after a third round of stress tests in October, has ordered Europe’s fragile banks to raise more than 114 billion euros in fresh cash in the next six months.

By June 2012, the region’s financial institutions will need to increase their so-called core Tier 1 capital ratio — the strictest measure of a bank’s ability to resist financial shocks — to 9 percent of assets ...

NYT  23 Dec 2011    A Two Speed Europe    Bankocracy Log

Tax avoidance trade puts Square Mile in spotlight again

Some of the city of London's biggest banks are behind a huge tax avoidance trade "cheating" European countries of hundreds of millions of euros a year, in a development that sheds fresh light on David Cameron's decision to wield Britain's EU veto to protect the Square Mile.

A two-month study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has uncovered a £65.7bn market in European equity dividends whose "central" purpose is tax avoidance ...

Dividend arbitrage is complex.

But at its heart, a bank or hedge fund lends equities in often high-yielding French, German or Italian companies to another institution.

The receiving institution then passes the equities through a network of low- or no-tax jurisdictions, before returning the equities to the original owner using a subsidiary in another tax haven.

In this way, banks can avoid the 15% average "withholding tax" levied on dividends in European countries ...

Lord Oakeshott called for the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the Treasury and the European commission to launch an investigation to ensure full disclosure of all dividend arbitrage transactions ...

Icap, the brokerage run by the former Conservative party treasurer and outspoken critic of the EU's financial transaction tax proposal, Michael Spencer, is the broking firm most used by banks to buy and sell equities for the purpose of "dividend washing", as the trade is more commonly known, according to four well-placed City sources ...

Obs  18 Dec 2011    A Two Speed Europe Log    Bankocracy Log    Hedge Funds    Tax Dodgers

Icap

Michael Spencer

Revealed: how City fees are eating into our pensions

Revealed: how City fees are eating into our pensions

'Christian values' or markets, Mr Cameron: which is to be?

A source who has seen the presentation told the Observer that the conclusion was fund managers had "lost sight" of their customers and that the government needed to act.

The presentation suggested that the country's pensions black hole – unfunded public and private pension commitments – could be wiped out over time if costs could be reduced, a source said.

"They are so high that the industry is actually destroying value for the UK investor at least as fast as the stock market can create it," the source said.

"The government's message is that you have to save for your retirement, but with the amount you will make it hardly makes it worthwhile if these costs are being taken out. And the highest cost of all are personnel costs, wages and bonuses." ...

The experts behind the advice ... revealed that the £2.1 trillion assets under management in the UK attract a cost of £67.2bn a year – or the equivalent of 3.2% – with the greatest cost being wages and bonuses for traders and fund managers ...

Gdn  17 Dec 2011    A 'greed is good' wealth log    Contesting the Markets Log

'Wall Street'

Tax avoidance trade puts Square Mile in spotlight again

The law of opposites: Illusory profits in the financial sector

The Adam Smith Institute report is structured around six shortcomings in the rules governing bank profit and capital reporting, which must be addressed:

• Uncertain future cashflows can be recognised as certain by purchasing a credit default swap (CDS) or similar “protection”, even though the supplier of the protection is likely to default if the insured event occurs;

• Profits can be recognised from the increased value of assets, or decreased value of liabilities, on the basis of a market price, even though the totality of revalued assets or liabilities could not be sold at that price;

• Profits can be recognised from the increased value of assets, or decreased value of liabilities, even when the revaluation of assets is estimated, not by market prices, but by a model built by bank employees. This is the so-called mark-to-model approach to valuation;

• The net present value of uncertain future cashflows can be recognised as profits even when they are estimated using implausibly optimistic forecasts. (This is a variation of the mark-to-model problem listed above);

• The EU’s IFRS accounting system, voluntarily adopted by UK and Irish banks at the banking company level, is inconsistent with UK law

• Banks need not make provision for expected losses when calculating their profit ...

Adam Smith Institute  14 Dec 2011    Banking Reform    Bankocracy Log

Gordon Gekko

Banks use accounting loopholes to inflate profits and bolster bonuses

Mark to model

RBS report: 'poor decisions' by management and FSA blamed for failure

But there's no mention of the architect of this failed 'regulatory' system: Gordon Brown

Hector Sants, chief executive of the FSA, will come under intense scrutiny today after the regulator's admission of a catalogue of supervisory failures at RBS.

Mr Sants took over as chief executive in July 2007, three months before RBS concluded its disastrous acquisition of ABN Amro and weeks before the credit crunch that killed Northern Rock began.

He was also in charge when the regulator cleared RBS to raise its dividend by 10pc on February 28, 2008 - just weeks before the bank conceded it had a massive capital shortfall and tapped shareholders for £12bn in a record UK rights issue.

Political sources have privately raised questions about whether Mr Sants should take up his position as the third deputy governor of the Bank of England, as head of financial supervision, next year.

Banking insiders joke that he is the only chief executive of a financial institution during the crisis not only to have survived, but been promoted ...

Tel  12 Dec 2011    Bankocracy Log    Coalition Log    Losing Democracy Log    Whither Britain Log

Dominance Hierarchy    Ed Balls    Gordon Brown's Mansion House speech, 2006    Whither Britain Log

RBS report shows why we should break up this cosy boardroom

Financial Services Authority caught napping over Royal Bank of Scotland

RBS failed to grasp scale of sub-prime exposure

Sants under scrutiny as FSA admits RBS failings

NEF - Financial Reform

Former RBS investment banking boss heads off FSA criticism of role in crisis

Cameron was not the only RBS executive to suggest Goodwin was an aggressive and intimidating boss.

Former head of wealth management Cameron McPhail has recalled that the chief executive's morning meeting conference calls with senior figures were known by some internally as "morning beatings".

Even Mathewson, who brought Goodwin into RBS, conceded: "He can be quite forbidding".

David Appleton, head of media relations, said on a recent BBC documentary that Goodwin was a bully.

"People were intimidated from speaking their own mind because they feared Fred's reaction.

"This created an atmosphere around him that inhibited even the most senior people in the bank from expressing their views." ...

Obs  11 Dec 2011

RBS report heralds tighter rules for Bank of England

You could NOT make it up!

A draft of the Financial Services Bill is set to be published as early as this week and the RBS report will be seen as an important piece of evidence for those who say the new regulations must include tougher provisions to ensure that bodies such as the Bank and the new Financial Conduct Authority are held accountable for their actions.

The report could throw light on the role of Hector Sants, chief executive of the FSA, who green-lighted RBS’s acquisition of Dutch financial group ABN Amro in 2007.

Mr Sants is set to head the new Bank-run Prudential Regulation Authority that will take on the FSA’s powers of oversight.

Tel  10 Dec 2011    Bankocracy Log

Dominance Hierarchy    Gordon Brown's Mansion House speech, 2006

RBS failed to grasp scale of sub-prime exposure

HSBC fined £10m for mis-selling to pensioners

The FSA said that between 2005 and 2010, a subsidiary of the bank, NHFA (previously known as the Nursing Home Fees Agency) advised 2,485 customers to invest in investment bonds, and other asset-based products, to fund long-term care costs.

The average age of these customers was 83 – and a sample review suggested that almost 90pc of these cases were mis-sold.

In total the amount invested in these products was close to £285m – meaning the average amount invested per customer was about £115,000.

The FSA ruled that this advice was unsuitable, because these products were designed to be held for a minimum of five years; but many of these customers were not expected to live this long.

A combination of capital withdraw, and high product charges meant that people's money was reduced far faster than if they had been recommended alternatives – such as a high-interest fixed-rate account, or an Isa ...

Tel  05 Dec 2011    Bankocracy Log    Caring for the elderly the free market way    Third Meltdown Log

Farepak fees reach £8.2m

The great majority of customers are still waiting to receive some of their money back, which is expected to total £5.53m. However, this is dwarfed by £8.2m earned by lawyers, administrators, insurers and media relation executives during both the administration and liquidation of the company, according to fresh documents filed at Companies House.

BDO, as administrator and now liquidator, has already earned fees equating to £3.8m, excluding VAT ...

Tel  27 Nov 2011    Third Meltdown Log

Justice For Farepak Victims

European Home Retail

Dow, Bhopal and the $1bn push for damages

Olympic Games, 2012, puts corporate interests first, shock!

In 2001, Dow Chemical, which manufactured Agent Orange and napalm used by the US in Vietnam, bought Union Carbide Corporation, the majority shareholder and financial controller of Union Carbide India – which operated the Bhopal factory.

Dow says that the $490m settlement by UCC in 1991 to compensate gas victims was final.

The Indian government is currently seeking between $600m (£388m) and $1.24bn from Dow and UCC in the Supreme Court.

Dow's sponsorship deal with the International Olympic Committee is worth $1bn ...

Ind  26 Nov 2011    Third Meltdown Log    Bhopal

2012 London Olympics: Police State Opening Ceremony

London is getting into the Olympic spirit - by kicking out the Gypsies

Why has executive pay increased so drastically?

The 'trickle down' theory gets unscrutinised support ...

The High Pay Commission today reports on the 30 year trend of increasing top pay that has left the earnings gap between the very richest and the rest of society wider than at any point since Queen Victoria was on the throne.

The report identifies the early 1980s as the turning point when the pay gap started to grown rapidly ...

In the last year alone executive pay in FTSE 100 companies grew by 49%.

The report cites the example of Barclays, where top pay is now 75 times that of the average worker. In 1979 it was 14.5.

Over that period, the lead executive's pay in Barclays has risen by 4,899.4% – from £87,323 to a £4,365,636.

It was argued that to achieve the necessary dynamism those at the top of companies must be incentivised, and their interests must be tied to those of the shareholders ...

That wealth would then trickle down to the rest of society ...

Gdn  22 Nov 2011    A 'greed is good' wealth log    Inequality    John Redwood

Workers 'should be given powers' to help curb pay of top executives

Executive pay consultants behind escalating boardroom salaries

Recent trends are illuminating: in 1978, the head of British Aerospace was paid £29,000.

By 2010, the head of its successor company, BAe Systems, collected a package worth nearly £2.4m, a rise of 8,000%.

That compares with an increase of 556% in median male income over the same period.

But why has boardroom pay skyrocketed in recent years?

Critics point their fingers at the pay consultants appointed by remuneration committees at top companies, describing their relationship as being akin to a cartel.

Twenty years ago such firms did not exist and pay negotiations were thrashed out between the executive and the board with some help from lawyers.

There are now half a dozen specialist pay consultancies in the City whose sole job is to advise remuneration committees how much executives should be paid and how to structure their pay packages.

The consultants' fees are kept private but are in line with those charged by accountants and lawyers ...

A recent survey by Income Data Services found senior directors at FTSE-100 companies last year enjoyed a 49% pay rise, earning on average £2.7m – 113 times the national average of £24,000 for a worker in the private sector, where salaries have risen 3% in the last year.

The average chief executive saw their total payout jump by 43% to £3.9m.

And all this at a time when business groups are lobbying for the scrapping of the 50% higher marginal tax rate ...

Gdn  18 Nov 2011    A 'Greed is Good' Wealth Log    Global Risks 2012    Inequality
Is Capitalism the only game in town?    Third Meltdown Log

UK urged to prevent vulture funds preying on world's poorest countries

Britain is being urged to help close down a legal loophole that lets financiers known as "vulture funds" use courts in Jersey to claim hundreds of millions of pounds from the world's poorest countries.

The call came from international poverty campaigners as one of the vulture funds was poised to be awarded a $100m (£62m) debt payout against the Democratic Republic of the Congo after taking action in the Jersey courts ...

In the case before the Jersey court, to be decided next month, FG Hemisphere, run by vulture financier Peter Grossman, is trying to collect $100m from the DRC on a debt that appeared to start out at just $3.3m.

The original debt was owed to the former Yugoslav government to build power lines ...

Gdn  15 Nov 2011    A 'modern and compassionate' party    Third Meltdown Log    

Tories accused of scuppering vulture funds bill

Vulture funds

City property deals benefit a developer linked to lord mayor

Bill Parry-Davies of the action group OPEN, who is also a solicitor in Hackney, said: "The City has been discreetly investing in speculative land acquisitions, in combination with acquisitions of neighbouring land by Hammerson, to assemble large sites in Hackney's City fringe for comprehensive high-rise office redevelopment. The City has been working closely with Hammerson.

"The City has also been investigating, with Hammerson, ways to defeat challenges by local residents and businesses who regard the City's expansion as predatory."

While the Corporation denies that developments and investments on its periphery are part of an expansion, its officials have described land it has bought as part of a "path of progress" from the City's existing boundaries.

Documents seen by the Guardian reveal that the Corporation has spent at least £60m acquiring lands in the Tabernacle street area of east London, and at least £40m acquiring several nearby properties on a site known as Nicholls & Clarke after a builders' merchant which partly occupies it.

The acquisition of the sites was described as being for redevelopment to provide large-scale offices "for City type occupiers".

The money for the Nicholls & Clarke acquisition came from the Corporation's "City cash" fund, which is known to have holdings of at least £1bn but whose assets remain closed to public scrutiny because the Corporation describes it as a commercially sensitive "private fund" ...

Gdn  06 Nov 2011    Losing Democracy        

McDonald's chief : Curb spending and cut taxes

"The question is, how can we get the ox out of the ditch?" Mr Skinner said. "In order to create jobs in America, you're going to have to cut taxes… particularly in the business community.

"We pay some of the highest [corporate] taxes around the world. There needs to be some levelling." ...

Skinner's intervention will be seized upon by President Obama's opponents amid a fierce debate in Washington over the country's deteriorating finances and high unemployment.

As Democrats and Republicans fire up their 2012 election campaigns, the focus is on the "9pc nightmare", with both the US budget deficit and jobless total at that level ...

Tel  06 Nov 2011

Trickle Down Theory    Pawns or Players?

The trouble with tax reform

Disparities complicate corporate tax reform

'The Fairtax Book' and 'Flat Tax Revolution'

The City must rediscover its morality

Did it have any morals in the first place?

(Ken Costa, the former chairman of Lazards International) ... said he still believed that the market was the best system for creating vital growth and jobs, said that boards and shareholders should have a richer understanding of what constitutes real value.

“The present duty – on all boards to maximise shareholder value as the sole criteria for satisfying the return to shareholders – cannot continue,” he said.

“I am aware that this is a big change that will need detailed discussion, but we need to start with big ideas.

“For some time and particularly during the exuberant irrationality of the last few decades, the market economy has shifted from its moral foundations with disastrous consequences.

"I cannot recall when public feeling worldwide has run so high, and even if only a minority takes its anger on to the streets, no one should imagine that the majority is indifferent to their cause.” ...

Tel  05 Nov 2011    Third Meltdown Log

Corporate Capital Home Page     Fear and Greed: The Markets as Feudian Id    The only game in town?

Occupy London

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

Cardiff research finds half of workers are ill-treated

The move to extreme individualism has has made bullying more acceptable at all levels

The survey found 4.9% of workers were victims of violence while 22.3% said they were treated in a disrespectful or rude way. 27% said they felt ignored.

The study used data from face-to-face interviews with 3,979 workers ...

Workers in the public sector were reported to be "particularly at risk" of rudeness, disrespect, violence and injury.

Most attackers involved in violent incidents were said to be from outside the workplace, with 72% of assailants being customers, clients or members of the public. Workers in health, social work, education, public administration and defence faced the highest risk.

Staff in the private sector were more likely to suffer assaults by colleagues.

Disabled employees, those with long-term health problems and younger staff are all more likely to experience ill treatment at work, as were lesbian, gay and bisexual workers ...

BBC NEWS  02 Nov 2011    Third Meltdown Log

Dominance Hierarchy: The Lure of the Sociopath    The Blank Slate & the Utopian Vision

Family & Parenting Institute

Bully OnLine

National Bullying Helpline

F. A. Hayek, “Makena,” and Corporate Sociopathy

FTSE 100 directors' earnings rose by almost half last year

A question for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London and the Dean of St Paul's:

Whose side are you on, Gordon Gekko or Giles Fraser?

Total earnings for directors of FTSE 100 companies increased by 49% last year, far outpacing pay claims for workers outside the boardroom.

A FTSE 100 executive typically received an average of £2.7m in 2010, according to the research by Incomes Data Services, which analysed payouts of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive plans the last financial year.

For chief executives, the average total pay deal was £3.8m – an average rise of 43.5% – while IDS calculated that finance directors received an average increase of 34.1%,to take their average to £2m, while all other directors received an average increase of 66.5%, to take their average to £2.2m.

The directors enjoyed such large increases in the total take-home pay as bonus schemes compensated for the average 3.2% rise in base salaries that they were awarded last year. Inflation is running at 5.2% while data from IDS shows that pay deals in the private sector are running at 2.6% ...

Gdn  28 Oct 2011    A 'greed is good' wealth log    
Growing Inequality    In the absence of economic democracy    Third Meltdown

Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds

In praise of … Giles Fraser

Richard Desmond's Health Lottery under scrutiny by watchdog

The Health Lottery has attracted criticism from leading charity figures and the National Lottery operator, Camelot, since it launched last month.

Critics have complained that the lottery donates the bare minimum – 20.3p in every £1 – to good causes, and that its unconventional structure is potentially in breach of the Gambling Act 2005 ...

Critics have said that Desmond's Health Lottery sidesteps the spirit of the law by operating as a large umbrella group of 51 separate society lotteries, meaning it can circumvent strict caps on the turnover of individual lotteries.

The Gambling Act states that small society lotteries must operate and be branded individually and have a revenue cap of £10m.

The Health Lottery has been accused of effectively operating as an alternative national lottery, with a £510m turnover cap from its 51 individual lotteries.

Critics point out that each of the 51 Health Lottery companies has the same three directors, office address and branding ...

The culture secretary also signalled an end to opt-in self-regulation of the newspaper industry.

Hunt said that it was "unsatisfactory to say the least" of the Press Complaints Commission setup that Desmond was able to withdraw his titles from the body's remit in January this year.

Gdn  27 Oct 2011    Corporate Media

Goldman Sachs let off paying £10m interest on failed tax avoidance scheme

Documents leaked to Private Eye magazine and published in full by the Guardian record that Britain's top tax official, HMRC's permanent secretary Dave Hartnett, personally shook hands on a secret settlement last December.

Hartnett is due to be questioned on Wednesday by the Commons public accounts committee.

The leaked documents suggest that a previous PAC chairman, Edward Leigh, was misled when he was told it was illegal to reveal details of such cases to parliament.

Leaked legal advice from James Eadie QC, which the Guardian also publishes today, says the opposite.

Hartnett has discretion to reveal such facts to the parliamentary watchdog, according to the advice.

Leigh said: "It just underlines the absurd culture of secrecy that still pervades Whitehall." ...

The £10m Christmas gift for Goldman was the culmination of a prolonged attempt by the US firm to avoid paying national insurance on huge bonuses for its bankers working in London.

The sum was pocket change to Goldman, whose employees received $15.3bn (£9.5bn) in pay and bonuses last year ...

Gdn  11 Oct 2011    'Doing God's Work'    Tax Dodgers    Third Meltdown    

Minutes of meeting on Goldman Sachs settlement

Discussion of legal advice on disclosure to parliament

Quarter of FTSE 100 subsidiaries located in tax havens

The 100 largest groups registered on the London Stock Exchange have more than 34,000 subsidiaries and joint ventures between them.

A quarter of these, over 8,000, are located in jurisdictions that offer low tax rates or require limited disclosure to other tax authorities.

UK companies are required by law to report a list of their subsidiary companies together with their country of registration to Companies House.

However, many of the FTSE 100 have failed to do so in the past.

Disclosure of the full list by all 100 groups is the result of a formal complaint made by ActionAid to Companies House and a subsequent investigation by the business secretary, Vince Cable ...

... it emerges that 98 of the FTSE 100 companies use tax havens, with only Fresnillo, a Mexican-based mining company, and Hargreaves Lansdown, a Bristol-based financial services group, declaring no offshore subsidiaries ...

Gdn  11 Oct 2011    Tax Dodgers    Third Meltdown    

Tax havens and the FTSE 100: the full list

Action Aid

Tax Research UK

UK and Switzerland agree tax treaty

The deal is part of a wider agreement that will see UK taxpayers with Swiss accounts pay a withholding tax of 48pc on investment income and 27pc on capital gains.

The levies will apply to accounts that are not fully disclosed to HM Revenue & Customs.

Exchequer Secretary, David Gauke, said:

"This is an excellent agreement which tackles a problem many people thought would never be solved.

"Working with the Swiss Government we have delivered a highly effective solution which will benefit both countries and recover billions of pounds of unpaid tax for the UK."

However, the agreement comes as concerns were raised about Swiss banks transferring customer accounts to subsidiaries in jurisdictions that do not have the same tax agreements.

HMRC said any bank caught encouraging clients to move their money to avoid tax would become liable for that tax.

Mike Warburton, Grant Thornton tax partner, said:

"Between a bank actively encouraging their clients to put money into a convenient offshore jurisdiction and a client asking to transfer their money is a very wide grey area. How HMRC will police this remains to be seen." ...

Tel  07 Oct 2011    Coalition Log    Tax Dodgers

UK signs agreement to tax Swiss bank accounts

Germany has set back the fight against tax evasion

Deal reached on Swiss-German tax treaty

End Tax Haven Secrecy

Troubled Dexia helped fund £5.8bn of PFI projects

Demonstrating that the crisis in the eurozone can have repercussions in the UK, the bank has played a role in projects such as widening the M25 and financing university accommodation ...

It is possible that the bank has sold out or refinanced some of these projects ... since then.

The bank, which needed to be bailed out by France and Belgium during the 2008 banking crisis with €6bn (£5bn) of taxpayers' money, is now hoping to be able to restructure its operations in an "orderly manner and under the best conditions".

The market is concerned about its potential losses in Greece (where it has €3.4bn of exposure) which in turn has created problems for the bank when raising funds on the money markets ...

Masistios
4 October 2011 9:43AM

So here's an interesting scenario;

Government A borrows £1 billion from bank X for a PFI scheme.

Private Company B borrows £1 billion from bank X to match fund that PFI scheme.

Government A says to private company B - "wow, thanks for your cooperation; we'll give you back your £1 billion plus interest plus £700 million profit over 15 years".

So far, for a £2 billion PFI scheme, government A has promised to pay £2.7 billion over 15 years.

BUT

Bank X is now being bailed out by the taxpayer. Bank X can decide which of its debts are 'bad' and therefore, which ones to write off.

SO

Private company B can say to Bank X - "hey, you know, £1 billion is a lot for us to pay back; how about slipping us on to your ol' bad debt list ?"

"Sure" say bank X "no problem - we'll get the taxpayer to stump it up as a part of the bailout scheme".

SO NOW

Government A (the taxpayers thereof) are committed to paying £3.7 billion for a £2 billion PFI scheme.

AND

Private Company B - gets to keep the £700 million profit AND the £1 billion they would have used to pay back their loan to Bank X.

Is that how it works?

Think I'll become a banker or a PFI partner. I'm certainly fed up with being a taxpayer!

Gdn  04 Oct 2011    Bankocracy Log    Corporate State Log

NHS hospitals crippled by PFI scheme

State-controlled Lloyds in deal with cluster bomb manufacturer

Lloyds Securities Inc, the US offshoot of the British banking group, was part of a syndicate that helped Lockheed raise $2 billion through bond deals.

A copy of the bond brochure obtained by The Independent shows Lloyds agreed to underwrite $10m (£6.4m) worth of bonds, which will prove controversial when UK tax payers still own 41 per cent of the bank.

The deal comes at a time of growing criticism over the Government's failure to plug a legal loophole that allows companies to invest in cluster bomb manufacturers despite a ban on them.

Britain is a signatory to the Cluster Munitions Convention, a global treaty forbidding the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster bombs which has been signed by more than 100 countries.

Yet there is nothing to stop British companies investing in cluster bomb manufacturers as long as they don't directly invest in the bombs themselves ...

Ind  03 Oct 2011    Bankocracy Log

Head of Lloyds Bank's retail arm gets shares worth £2.3m

It's not just the systemic greed; it's not just the fact that Lloyds is supposed to be nationalised: what should worry us most is that no other sector of the economy can match 'rewards' of this nature, which both distorts career choices, and with it, the prospect of rebalancing the economy away from fiat currency banking.

Bailed out Lloyds Banking Group has handed the new head of its high street banking arm, Alison Brittain, more than 7.6m shares – worth £2.3m – to buy her out of performance related deals at Spanish bank Santander ...

A stock exchange announcement by Lloyds shows the cost of recruiting her from the Spanish bank, from which the new Lloyds chief executive António Horta-Osório, has recruited many members of his top team.

The 7.6m of shares are awarded in three tranches.

The first 1.2m are hers regardless of performance provided she stays until January 2014.

She will get a further 612,153 if certain performance criteria – which Lloyds did not disclose – are achieved by June 2013 while the largest portion, some 5.9m, will vest in December 2012 provided performance criteria are achieved.

It is costing Lloyds up to £4.6m to buy Horta-Osório out of his previous deals at Santander after he was handed 6m shares – which payout over three years – and £516,000 in cash.

Other executives he brought with him from Santander have cost £2.3m to buy out of previous pay deals ...

Gdn  27 Sept 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log    Wealth Log

The trader who lifted the lid on what the City really thinks

"I have a confession, I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this," [Alessio Rastani] told dumbstruck BBC News presenter Martine Croxall, when asked if the proposed eurozone bailout would work ...

"I'm a trader," he said. "We don't really care whether they're going to fix the economy, our job is to make money from it.

"The 1930s depression wasn't just about a market crash," he added. "There were some people who were prepared to make money from that crash. I think anyone can do that. It's an opportunity." ...

Ind  27 Sept 2011    Third Meltdown Log        

Payday loans companies reported to OFT

operating without a consumer credit licence ...

failed to show the APR for its loans ...

dozens of unsolicited third party emails and phone calls ...

sell(ing) customers' details to third parties ...

misleading claims about APR ...

encouraging customers to borrow more than they need and to rollover existing loans ...

lax website security, with one provider requiring customers to enter their bank details on an unsecured page ...

Gdn  23 Sept 2011    Bankocracy Log    Third Meltdown Log    

The City bars where nobody knows your name – or how much you've lost

... it is left to one trader enjoying an end-of-the-week drink to explain how local "rogues" can hide.

"You can usually cover up rogue trades for about two weeks," he says.

"When the compliance department calls to say that the client you've booked the trade for has 'DK'ed you [City slang for "doesn't know"], you can say you'll check your records as there may have been a mix-up.

"You can then book it under somebody else's name, but if you can't square the position before being DK'ed again they [compliance] will be back.

"You've got about a fortnight."

Denial, then, is the initial policy ...

One former City banker offers the theory that some banks "insist on hiring mediocre people [and] overpaying them" before disaster subsequently strikes ...

Gdn  18 Sept 2011    Bankocracy Log    Third Meltdown Log

Kweku Adoboli

UBS, the big bank that can't stay out of trouble

Barings Bank 1995 collapse

An invitation for Bahrain

Invitations to the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition – an enormous arms fair which opens its doors today at the ExCeL Centre – have been extended to 65 countries.

At least 14 delegations hail from countries that are defined as "authoritarian regimes" by human rights groups ...

Arms campaigners have expressed dismay that Bahrain ... has been invited ...

Other countries that have been sent invitations include Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the UAE and Kazakhstan.

Arms campaigners had tried for months to discover which national delegations were being invited to the arms fair through freedom of information requests but they were rebuffed.

The government finally published the list yesterday once national newspapers, including The Independent, began to make enquiries last week ...

The government defends the arms industry as a vibrant and lucrative part of the UK economy ...

Franglais59

Israel will be there in force, but no mention of them in the article..

“Israel’s largest comparative advantage is in military products, because these demand advanced technology on one hand and military experience on the other… no country in the world is as dependent on arms sales as Israel. The Jaffa orange is fast being edged out of the public consciousness by the Uzi submachine gun as Israel’s major export. Israel is the largest per capita arms exporter in the world”

Moshe Arens, former Israeli Defence Minister

“The Israeli government and its army have been for years now using the West Bank and Gaza as their testing ground. The Palestinians are their guinea pigs. The Israeli army uses tear gas that would probably be banned in any other countries in the world. They shoot tear gas, directly at protesters, once again, an illegal act. But a very rewarding one. Israel’s security industry is booming. It’s never been this good. Countries all over the world are buying Israel’s expertise in security, crowd control and weaponry every day. Israeli soldiers are training other countries commandos all over the planet”

From the blog, Bil’in: A Village of Palestine, 02/01/11

Ind  13 Sept 2011    Coalition Log    Third Meltdown Log

BAe Systems

The £300m cable that will save traders milliseconds

What a diffrence six milliseconds makes in the race for profit

The laying of the new transatlantic communications cable is a viable proposition because Hibernia Atlantic, the company behind it, is planning to sell a special superfast bandwidth that will have hyper-competitive trading firms and banks in the City of London and New York queuing to use it.

In fact it is predicted they will pay about 50 times as much to link up via the Hibernian Express than they do via existing transatlantic cables.

The current leader, Global Crossing's AC-1 cable, offers transatlantic connection in 65 milliseconds.

The Hibernian Express will shave six milliseconds off that time.

Of course, verifiable figures are elusive and estimates vary wildly, but it is claimed that a one millisecond advantage could be worth up to $100m (£63m) a year to the bottom line of a large hedge fund ...

Tel  11 Sept 2011    Bankocracy Log    

Pipeline Spills Put Safeguards Under Scrutiny

This summer, an Exxon Mobil pipeline carrying oil across Montana burst suddenly, soiling the swollen Yellowstone River with an estimated 42,000 gallons of crude just weeks after a company inspection and federal review had found nothing seriously wrong.

And in the Midwest, a 35-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Mich., once teeming with swimmers and boaters, remains closed nearly 14 months after an Enbridge Energy pipeline hemorrhaged 843,000 gallons of oil that will cost more than $500 million to clean up.

While investigators have yet to determine the cause of either accident, the spills have drawn attention to oversight of the 167,000-mile system of hazardous liquid pipelines crisscrossing the nation.

The little-known federal agency charged with monitoring the system and enforcing safety measures — the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — is chronically short of inspectors and lacks the resources needed to hire more, leaving too much of the regulatory control in the hands of pipeline operators themselves ...

NYT  09 Sept 2011    Contesting the Markets Log    Peak Oil

Trashing Democracy, Society, Environment

Glencore on its safety record, environmental performance and tax

One of the business stories of the year so far was the flotation in May of Glencore, the global commodities trader.

Not only did the flotation shine a light on "the biggest company you've never heard of", as some described the secretive, Switzerland-based private firm, but it also revealed the extraordinary extent of Glencore's assets and market influence.

As the Guardian wrote in an editorial ahead of the flotation:

"Glencore is the world's largest commodities trader, controlling 60% of the zinc market, 50% of the trade in copper, 45% of lead and a third of traded aluminium and thermal coal. Oh, and 3% of the world's oil and 9% of its grain too."

As part of its flotation, it announced that it would soon be publishing its first-ever sustainability report.

Would it provide answers to some of the questions raised by Glencore's critics about its attitude and track record on controversial issues, such as environmental performance, worker safety and taxation? ...

Gdn  07 Sept 2011    Third Meltdown Log    

Glencore Sustainability Report 2010

Glencore signs fuels contract with Libya's NTC

Glencore has $10.4bn war chest ...

Glencore reveals record of fatalities and environmental fines

Controversy Looms Over Nile Petroleum, Glencore Joint Venture

Glencore profit jumps on oil and grain demand

Glencore 'is in dark ages' compared with rivals

The rise of Glencore

A special investigation into pollution, dubious tax practices and exploitation ...

Glencore: Profiteering from hunger and chaos

Glencore: Miner to major

Glencore: Dealings with "rogue states"

Glencore - Sourcewatch

Bosses' bonuses up by 187% since 2002

Average bonuses for directors of FTSE 350 companies have risen by 187% since 2002, without a corresponding rise in share prices, new research suggests.

The High Pay Commission said on Monday that average annual bonuses were worth 48% of salary in 2002, but are now 90%.

Commission chairman Deborah Hargreaves said it was a "myth" that big bonuses meant companies performed better ...

During the time bosses' salaries rose by 63%, said the report, which is due to publish its full findings in November ...

The study also found that total pay packages for company executives in the wider FTSE 350 had gone up by 700% since 2002 ...

Pay levels for the average worker in Britain have risen by 27% over the past decade ...

BBC NEWS  05 Sept 2011    Bonus Culture    'Greed is good' Wealth Log    Inequality

Matthew Hancock: tackle bankers' greed or expect history to repeat itself

The book challenges the myth that people and businesses always act in their own best interests, and recommends a series of checks and balances to ensure poor judgments are challenged.

Among the most controversial proposals is the idea for the creation of a "public protagonist" with the remit to question corporate transactions, such as mergers and takeovers, where managements are highly-incentivised to deliver deals that may not be in the interests of stakeholders.

The protagonist would have the authority to convene special shareholder meetings on behalf of the public and publicly test courses of actions planned by the management.

Better decision-making should also be incentivised, the authors suggest, by legislation to create a new crime of professional gross negligence for senior managers of "systemically-important financial institutions", with convictions punishable by imprisonment ...

Banker bonuses should also be subject to a 10-year clawback, the authors suggest, while women should make up at least 30pc of company boards because greater diversity changes decision-making and brings better business performance.

If businesses do not comply within a year with this gender recommendation, the authors believe legislation should force them to do so ...

Tel  04 Sept 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    Coalition Log    What is to be done? Log    

SFO joins US inquiry into bank practices

The action by the SFO comes as details of potential lawsuits against major banks on both sides of the Atlantic emerged.

In the US, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are all being targeted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) over the sale of mortgage-backed securities.

In the UK, Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland are expected to be named in US legal papers ...

Tel  03 Sept 2011    Bankocracy Log    What caused the credit crunch?

Banks 'still expect taxpayer to pay for their failure'

State-backed banks 'could pay for 1p cut in tax'

Goldman Sachs faces fine over 'misconduct' at former unit

U.S. Is Set to Sue a Dozen Big Banks Over Mortgages

Reckless Endangerment

Author Michael Lewis On Wall St's Delusion

Rupert Murdoch receives $12.5m bonus

The News Corporation chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, received a $12.5m (£7.7m) cash bonus for the last financial year, while his total remuneration rose 47% year on year to $33m, according to the company's annual statement to shareholders.

His son James Murdoch – who is deputy chief operating officer, with responsibility for News Corporation's business in Europe and Asia – also benefited handsomely, with a $6m cash bonus taking his total remuneration to almost $18m – a 74% rise on his 2010 take-home pay.

Chase Carey, News Corp's chief operating officer and Murdoch's right-hand man, took home $30m in the year to 30 June, including a $10m bonus.

Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News, received a slight increase in total compensation in 2011, up to $15.5m from $13.9m in 2010. Ailes received a $1.5m cash bonus.

Gdn  02 Sept 2011    'Titillation and Diversion'    'Greed is good' Wealth Log

So arrogant and stupid they might bring us all down:

Darling's verdict on Britain's bankers

Alistair Darling ... delivers a damning verdict on the leadership skills of the most senior figures in the High Street banks that had to be bailed out at the cost to the taxpayer of £50 billion.

According to a leak from his forthcoming book published by the Labour Uncut website yesterday, he is withering about the attitude displayed by Sir Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, to the emergency.

Mr Darling complains that Sir Fred behaved as if he was "off to play a game of golf" rather than confronting the threat of a collapse in the banking sector.

He even says that "Goodwin deserved to be a pariah" when he later refused to reduce his pension payments after being forced to resign ...

Mr Darling accuses Andy Hornby, the former chief executive of HBOS, of "looking like he was about to explode" when confronted with the gravity of the crisis that had developed under his leadership.

Mr Darling writes: "My worry was that they ... were so arrogant and stupid that they might bring us all down."

He also protests that bank chiefs uniformly showed a shocking ingratitude for the massive rescue package that kept their businesses afloat.

Mr Darling blames Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, and Adair Turner, the head of the Financial Services Authority, for their part in failing to avert the crisis ...

Ind  02 Sept 2011    Bankocracy Log    Third Meltdown Log

Clegg backs Cable in battle over bank reform

The Prime Minister, who has been lobbied intensively by bank bosses, has accepted their argument that the changes should be phased in over several years.

Government sources confirmed that could mean they would not take effect until after the next election, as The Independent predicted yesterday.

But Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are braced for a backlash from Sir John Vickers, chairman of the Independent Commission on Banking, which will propose ring-fencing of the banks' retail and investment arms in its final report on 12 September ...

Ind  01 Sept 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    Coalition Log    

Banks 'still expect taxpayer to pay for their failure'

Darling's verdict on Britain's bankers

The disproportionate damage banks can do

RBS helped bankroll Europe's last dictator

UK banks fund deadly cluster-bomb industry

British banks ignore money-laundering rules

Coalition must show it values banking sector - the UK needs the tax

Hegel on Wall Street

Balancing on a Cable

Revolving-door culture leaves government full of clever bankers

Bank of England chief Mervyn King calls for 'narrow banks'

Fiat Money Systems

City hits back at Vince Cable over banking reform comments

"There is only a finite amount of capital available"????

Cable has always argued for a tougher approach to the banks than the Tories.

But he sparked uproar yesterday when he said bankers were being "disingenuous in the extreme", in arguing for a delay in plans by the Independent Banking Commission (IBC) to force banks to ringfence their retail and investment banking operations.

Any regulatory changes could force high street banks to increase their reserves and the banking lobby has suggested it could endanger economic recovery.

Stuart Fraser, a former stockbroker and head of the City of London Corporation, said:

"It is vital we reconcile political imperatives with what is practical for banks.

"There is only a finite amount of capital available, and if banks have to stump up more, they shouldn't be rushed."

Sources in Whitehall have indicated that any changes could wait till after the 2015 general election, with Osborne reported as saying they could wait till 2019 ...

Gdn  31 Aug 2011

Analysis

Norman Smith

Chief political correspondent, BBC Radio 4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
However anxious ministers may be to ensure taxpayers never again have to foot the bill for bailing out stricken banks - they are in no rush to press ahead with any plans for them to be "split up".

The reason? They appear to have been convinced by many of the concerns raised by the City.

In particular, fears that such a move would be hugely de-stabilising for the banks at a time when ministers are desperate for them to focus on lending more money to British business.

They will also have been acutely alert to warnings from the British Bankers Association that any "split up" could prompt some banks to relocate outside Britain.

The danger for the government however is that delaying the changes until after the general election - voters may conclude that ministers have simply caved in to pressure from the banks. BBC NEWS 31 Aug 2011

   Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    Third Meltdown

Banking reforms 'may not happen until 2015'

Bank shares bounce on regulation fightback

Fiat Money Systems

Banking reforms 'must be delayed'

They don't come more 'third meltdown' than Angela Knight

Plans to reform the banking sector should be put on hold until the economy has recovered and taxpayers have been repaid for bailing out the banks, the head of the British Bankers' Association (BBA) has said.

Chief executive Angela Knight argued that now was not the right time to add to the sector's regulatory burden ...

Ind  29 Aug 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    Third Meltdown

Barclays finance chief brushes off Vince Cable attack

George Osborne and Vince Cable at war over bank reform

RBS helped bankroll Europe's last dictator

UK banks fund deadly cluster-bomb industry

British banks ignore money-laundering rules

BBA's Angela Knight faces calls to quit after PPI cave in

'We're natural hate figures. but that really isn't fair'

Banker-bashing is a British sport - let's move on

RBS helped bankroll Europe's last dictator

The Royal Bank of Scotland faces more damaging revelations about its ethical record after it emerged that the bank was part of a deal to issue more than $800m (£489m) in Belarusian government bonds earlier this year, a month after the country's leader, Alexander Lukashenko, ordered the brutal repression of pro-democracy campaigners.

The majority state-owned bank has now agreed to abandon doing any more deals with Mr Lukashenko after it was shamed by dissidents over its role in organising the bond issue, The Independent can reveal.

While many international enterprises refuse to invest in the country and its repressive regime, RBS became involved in January this year, alongside the Russian bank Sberbank, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank.

At the time, hundreds of people had just been arrested by Mr Lukashenko's KGB secret police and allegations of torture were widespread and credible ...

Ind  29 Aug 2011    Bankocracy Log    Third Meltdown Log    

UK banks fund deadly cluster-bomb industry

British banks ignore money-laundering rules

Disney factory faces probe into sweatshop suicide claims

It is claimed some of the 6,000 employees have to work an extra 120 hours every month to meet demand from western shops for the latest toys.

The factory, called Sturdy Products, makes toys for the giant Mattel company, which last month announced quarterly profits of £48m on the back of strong sales of Barbie dolls and Cars 2 toys.

Sturdy Products, in the city of Shenzhen, also makes toys for US superstore chain Walmart.

Among the brands produced are the Thomas the Tank Engine range, Matchbox cars, Cars, Toy Story, Barbie and Fisher Price products, Scrabble and the Hot Wheels sets ...

Sacom's accusations against the factory include:

¦ The employment of a 14-year-old. Staff also reported the presence of other child workers, according to the investigator.

¦ Routine excessive overtime. Employees produced a "voluntary" document they said they had to sign agreeing to work beyond the maximum overtime legal limit of 36 hours a month, along with wage slips that suggested they were averaging 120 hours of overtime a month.

¦ A harsh working environment in which workers complained of mistreatment by management. One worker injured on the production line was shouted at and ordered back to work despite needing medical treatment.

¦ Concerns about the chemicals in use and poor ventilation. Employees claimed three workers had fallen ill. They said they had to hide pots of adhesive and thinners during audits of the factory by its client companies.

¦ They also claimed that they were paid by the factory to give misleading answers during audits and that they were fined for failing to hit targets. The calculation of wages for different workers was described by Sacom as arbitrary. ...

Gdn  26 Aug 2011

SACOM

ICTI Care Foundation

RBS workers on £2,000 a day, email says

The salaries of several thousand contractors who work for the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have been accidentally leaked by a recruitment agency employee ...

The information contained in the email has yet to be made public, but it has been reported that some contract staff are paid as much as £2,000 a day ...

Ind  24 Aug 2011    Bankocracy Log    FYB Log    

Cost of insuring RBS debt reaches historic high

Banks are in a capital crunch again

UK banks fund deadly cluster-bomb industry

The Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC have all provided funding to the makers of cluster bombs, even as international opinion turns against a weapons system that is inherently indiscriminate and routinely maims or kills civilians ...

Ind  16 Aug 2011    Coalition Log

Pfizer pays out to Nigerian families of meningitis drug trial victims

The parents of four Nigerian children who died of meningitis have become the first winners of a 15-year legal battle against Pfizer over a fiercely controversial drug trial.

The world's biggest research-based pharmaceutical company announced on Thursday that it had made payments of $175,000 (£108,000) to each family.

More such compensation settlements are expected to follow.

Pfizer was sued after 11 children died in a clinical trial when the northern state of Kano was hit by Africa's worst ever meningitis epidemic in 1996.

A hundred children were given an experimental oral antibiotic called Trovan, while a further hundred received ceftriaxone, the "gold-standard" treatment of modern medicine.

Five children died on Trovan and six on ceftriaxone.

But later it was claimed that Pfizer did not have proper consent from parents to use an experimental drug on their children and questions were raised over the documentation of the trial ...

Gdn  12 Aug 2011

Terrorism, Pfizer Style

Nigeria to sue Pfizer over 'fatal' children's drug tests

Drugs giant faces criminal charges over clinical trial

Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell

Pfizer Inc in the McSpotlight

Pharmaceuticals industry

Another way to reward the fat-cat directors

The headline figures are that the average FTSE 100 director is in line for a pension worth £175,000, 29 times more than the rest of the workforce.

And while two-thirds of guaranteed final salary pension schemes have been closed to the rank and file, 97 per cent of FTSE 350 companies have kept such plans for their directors.

A case of do as we say, not do as we do ...

One further thought: company directors are enjoying a disproportionate share of the enormous taxpayer subsidy for private pension provision.

Since they get so much more in both pay and pension benefits than their staff, the cost of giving them pensions tax relief is also so much higher ...

Ind  09 Aug 2011    'Greed is Good, Greed Works' Log    Inequality    

RBS poised to hire more investment bankers

The terms being offered to bankers by RBS have been lucrative and The Sunday Telegraph understands that some have been offered base salaries of as much as £999,999.

This figure is significant because the bank only has to publish the number of staff earning £1m or more.

Tel  06 Aug 2011    Bankocracy Log    Greed Log        

RBS to axe 2,000 jobs after tumbling £794m into the red

Royal Bank of Scotland posts £794m loss after Greece hit

Donald Trump pledges 'any legal means' fight against windfarm

The proposed windfarm in Aberdeen Bay, about 1.5 miles from the golf resort, would install the next generation of offshore wind turbine technology ...

David Milne, one of Trump's most critical neighbours, whose house at Hermit Point is next to the golf course now under construction, said the billionaire developer was turning into a "New York clown".

Milne's view over the dunes and the North Sea has been blocked by Trump; a 6-metre (20ft) high earth wall came first, later replaced with a row of spruce and pine trees surrounding Milne's property.

"How can a man who has just destroyed a site of special scientific interest and is in the process of despoiling an area of outstanding natural beauty with his golf course, comment on the view? It's laughable," Milne said ...

Gdn  05 Aug 2011    Eating the Future Log    FYB Log    

Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm

Shell oil spills in the Niger delta

Two oil spills caused by Shell in 2008 have triggered ongoing social and environmental problems for the 69,000 people who live in the vicinity of Bodo ...

Chief James, assistant secretary to the Bodo council of chiefs and elders, said every family had been affected by the disaster.

"Nowhere and no one has escaped," he said. "This has caused serious poverty to everyone. Nearly 80% of people here are fishermen or they depend on the water.

"They have lost their livelihoods. People are leaving the community in their hundreds to search for greener pastures. We used to live beautifully. People caught so much fish we could sell it to the cities. Now we have no hope," he said ...

Gdn  03 Aug 2011    FYB Log    

Shell Gets Tentative Approval to Drill in Arctic

Shell accepts liability for two oil spills in Nigeria

Profits soar at Shell

Shell's grip on Nigerian state revealed

Oil in Nigeria

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill

Ken Saro-Wiwa

Nigeria

Workers shun pension plans for lack of clarity over charges and risks

Workers in the private sector are being discouraged from saving for their retirement by fees and small print that would "puzzle Einstein", an independent investigation has warned.

A commission set up by the National Association of Pension Funds found workers were deterred by "charges, risks and complexity" of the pensions system.

Lord McFall of Alcluith, the former Treasury Select Committee chair who led the Workplace Retirement Income Commission, said:

"People need to get more bang for their buck, or they're not going to bother with a pension."

The commission said fee structures were too "opaque" and that many people were being short-changed by their choice of annuity.

Workers in defined contribution pensions were being left to carry all the risk of funding their retirement and were often "at the mercy" of stock markets, added the report.

Some 14 million are not saving into a workplace pension, moreover McFall said those who did were not saving enough and faced "scraping by in poverty on the state pension".

Gdn  01 Aug 2011    Falling Living Standards        

Pensions system in 'urgent need' of reform

BP 'has gained stranglehold over Iraq' after oilfield deal is rewritten

The documents seen by the Observer show that the terms of the original agreement proposed by the Iraqi oil ministry, under which BP comes in as a contractor and operator rather than owner, have been amended to put the British-based company and its Chinese partner in a far more advantageous position.

Section 12.5 of this revised technical service contract shows that BP and its Chinese partner CNPC can obtain payments for "government imposed curtailment" – which could cover quota demands made on Iraq by Opec.

This also applies to disruption to the transport of oil – "curtailments of transporter to receive net production at the transfer point through no fault of the contractor or operator".

The section goes on to say that in the event of such disruptions "the parties shall agree in good faith a mechanism to fully compensate [the] contractor as soon as practicable, which may include, among other things, a revised field production schedule or an extension to the term or payment of lost income in respect of the estimated volumes not produced during the period" ...

Obs  31 July 2011    Chilcott Inquiry    War on terror

'Last nation standing'

The secret renegotiation of BP's Iraqi oil contracts

Residents face demand for terrorism insurance

Leaseholders in Walthamstow, east London, have been told they must pay around an extra £68 a year, on top of their buildings insurance premium.

When one complained, he was told that "terrorist activity has in the past been present in Walthamstow".

Three people living in the area were convicted in 2009 and 2010 for their part in an airliner bomb plot ...

The ultimate beneficial owner of Freehold Managers is the Tchenguiz Family Trust.

Mayfair property tycoon Vincent Tchenguiz's sprawling empire was the subject of a Money investigation in February into allegations of excessive charges at several subsidiaries.

In early March he was one of nine men targeted in dawn raids by the Serious Fraud Office as part of its investigations into the collapse of one of the Icelandic banks ...

A longstanding Warner flat resident, who asked not to be named, told Money he received a letter from an insurance broker, Oval, which stated that he needed to pay £68 for a separate terrorism insurance policy.

This would be in addition to his buildings insurance, which cost around £240 ...

Gdn  15 July 2011    Ponzi Housing Market    

Lloyds strategic review puts up to 15,000 jobs at risk

Having earned a reputation as a cost-cutter at Spanish bank Santander, Horta-Osório, the City believes, will set out plans to axe an extra £1bn of savings, on top of the £2bn a year already being achieved as a result of the takeover of HBOS during the 2008 banking crisis.

Some 28,000 posts have already been lost as a result of the integration, and analysts estimate that another 15,000 jobs will now be cut ...

Obs  26 June 2011    Bankocracy Log    Coalition Log

Scandal of 'dirty gold' on British high streets

Sales staff at leading retailers misled shoppers about the origin of gold jewellery during an investigation into the real story behind gold rings, bangles and bracelets on sale on the high street, the i can reveal.

Campaigners claim the use of child labour and toxic metals is rife in developing countries which supply the multibillion pound global trade in "dirty gold".

But when Channel 4's Dispatches show asked leading high-street chains where their gold originated, they came up with misleading answers in an attempt to reassure customers their products were "ethical".

Experts say dirty gold accounts for between 10 and 30 per cent of global supply, but the origin of gold sold by UK retailers is not known.

The Dispatches documentary, The Real Price of Gold, to be aired on Monday, travelled to Senegal in Africa, where a 14-year-old boy, Djimbe Sidibe, was working in unsafe deep mines - and panning for gold using toxic mercury ...

i  25 June 2011    FYB Log    

British banks ignore money-laundering rules

The City of London is showing brazen disregard for rules to stop money laundering and is welcoming with open arms some of the world's most unsavoury political leaders and their cronies, according to a damning report by the Financial Services Authority.

The detailed study showed a third of banks were willing to dismiss serious allegations of corruption made repeatedly by credible sources, while others claimed to have run extensive money-laundering checks even though they had failed to spot grave allegations of criminality instantly found by a simple Google search.

More than a quarter of banks were only too delighted to offer services to controversial foreign politicians on the basis that credible allegations of corruption had not yet resulted in a criminal conviction ...

Robert Palmer of campaigners Global Witness said the FSA's warts-and-all report was commendably candid — far more so than comparable reports elsewhere in the world — but also raised questions as to the regulator's effectiveness.

"If I was the FSA I would be embarrassed that the banks they are supposed to regulate have such a disregard for regulations that have the force of law." ...

Gdn  22 June 2011    Bankocracy Log

Fiat Currency Banking    Financial Terror

Carbon Fat Cats could make 5.6 billion Euros from ETS

New research by Sandbag Climate Campaign has revealed the top ten companies profiting from Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), all of whom are prominent members of trade associations actively lobbying to prevent the system from being reformed.

The Carbon Fat Cats, all of them steel and cement companies, share between them surplus carbon permits (EUAs) of 240 million tonnes – more than the annual carbon emissions of Austria, Denmark, Portugal and Latvia combined.

Valued at 4.1 billion Euros, this windfall of free permits from 2008-2010 is worth over four times the entire EU environment budget over the same period.

The surplus could grow further to a value of over 5.6 billion Euros by the end of 2012.

This huge oversupply of permits is threatening to undermine the Emissions Trading Scheme, Europe’s central tool to cut pollution, which gives carbon emissions a price and helps to incentivise investment in low-carbon technology ...

Sandbag  19 June 2011    Carbon Trading

Europe's top industrial firms have a cache of 240m pollution permits

Behind corporate walls, the masters of the universe weep

' ... a futile “pursuit of opulence” ... '

In a recent blog post on the Harvard Business Review web site – and praise be to them for publishing it – Haque let rip on some of the absurdities of contemporary business and economic life.

“Just ask yourself,” he wrote, “if you were to walk into any corporation, would you find faces brimming over with deep fulfillment and authentic delight – or stonily asking themselves, ‘If it wasn’t for the accursed paycheck, would I really imprison myself in this dungeon of the human soul?’ ” ...

Ind  16 June 2011    FYB Log    What is to be done? Log

Neoliberal Financial Terrorism    The Dystopia of Individualism    Turbo Consumerism    

Anger as pay for top FTSE bosses soars by a third

The economic crisis has had little effect on the pay of top executives of FTSE 100 companies in Britain, who saw their median pay increase by 32 per cent in the last year to an average of £3.5m.

During the same period, average earnings across the UK rose by 2 per cent – half the rate of inflation – meaning an effective pay cut for most. A report by the consultancy firm MM&K and the corporate governance specialists Manifest found the pay of executives in Britain had little relation to performance or shareholder value. The increase was more than treble the 9 per cent rise in the FTSE 100 share index over the same period.

The increase means that the executives of FTSE 100 companies earn more than 150 times the average wage in Britain.

Ind  31 May 2011    Wealth Log

Gordon Gekko    Inequality

Bonus payments 'bounce back'

An analysis of official earnings figures by pay research specialists Incomes Data Services showed that large payouts in the finance and manufacturing sectors during February and March helped to maintain payments during the 2011 bonus season at a level similar to that recorded in 2010, when an estimated £22 billion was paid out.

Bonuses this year have been at a similarly high level to 2010, especially in financial and insurance firms, with payouts averaging over £900 a week, said the report.

The highest bonuses were in the finance and business services sector where a small proportion of staff receive very large bonuses and have a disproportionate impact on the picture for bonuses across the whole economy ...

Ind  27 May 2011    Global Risks 2011    Inequality

Glencore 'is in dark ages' compared with rivals, says NGO boss

From Bolivia, where Glencore is accused of allowing harmful waste into local water supply, to Zambia, where Glencore is alleged to have inflated its operating costs to reduce its tax bill, Glencore's interests in some of the world's most remote regions and in countries where democratic institutions are feeble have raised questions over the company's ethical and environmental performance ...

A report last month based on publicly available negative news stories from sources including NGO websites and blogs listed more than 20 accusations against the company.

There are questions over whether Glencore benefits people in the countries where it operates. "Take Zambia," said Missbach.

"Glencore has a 73% stake in the Mopani copper mine there, yet they pay royalties to Zambia of just 0.6%. Meanwhile, Zambia is number 150 out of 169 on the UN's Human Development Index. The scandal is that this is not a scandal."

Roger Moody, director of consultancy Nostromo Research, added the Mopani mine "raises serious questions in regards to its land use, safety record, and air and water pollution" ...

Gdn  19 May 2011    Globalization Log    Third Meltdown    Speculation in Commodities

Glencore shares finish where they start on first day of conditional trading

Glencore chairman is PR nightmare

Vince Cable blasts Glencore chairman

Glencore under fire for pushing up wheat prices

Public Eye Denounces Areva and Glencore

Glencore, China's CIC in cooperation pact

Bolivia denies Glencore compensation claims

Fear Of Dracula

Bankers and unanswerable questions

A question of who has the rights?

... if Sir Fred had a relationship with a senior colleague, in the way that Lord Stoneham suggests, three questions arise that are in the public interest to be answered:

1) was it in breach of Royal Bank's internal code of conduct in any way;

2) could it have any bearing on decisions about the risks taken on by RBS; and

3) is there anything else about the putative relationship which regulators, shareholders and the banks' non-executive directors should have known about? ...

... the Catch 22, as Lord Stoneham implies, is that we can't answer the questions, because of the existence of the injunction ...

Robert Peston  19 May 2011    Bankocracy Log    Third Meltdown Log    

High Court lifts Sir Fred Goodwin anonymity injunction

Jeremy Hunt rules out new privacy law