Friday is the 8th annual Celtic Quick News Open. The event, in which our guest speaker will be Livingston FC Manager and former Celt John Hughes, is completely booked up with a record 54 golfers. In addition to playing golf and having fun the CQN Open raises funds for good causes
Our good causes this year are The Haven Centre in Blantyre, Oscar Knox Neuroblastoma Appeal, Martin Chambers Ecuador Trust and Aberdour Primary School Parents’ Association.
We have already distributed over £2000 thanks to the sale of a Joseph Gormley painting back in April. We have two further fantastic paintings by Joseph; one of Scott Brown and one of Henrik Larsson. We also have a wonderful signed Neil Lennon print by the artist Gary Brandham.
The items are being raffled on ebay right now for the price of a £1 ticket. Winners will be drawn at the CQN Open on Friday night. There will be further raffles and auctions on Friday night with some excellent golfing and other sporting activities been donated by the Celtic family. Perhaps the pick is a limited edition canvas print of John Thomson, donated by the John Thomson Memorial Committee. There are only 22 of these in the entire world, representing the 22 years of John’s life.
This is a unique opportunity to win three great pieces of Celtic memorabilia, items which would normally be pushed out of the reach of most people at auction. Tickets cost £1, buy as many as you like, but participate. This is what your club is all about!
Many congratulations to Sean Fallon on his 90th birthday. I am delighted his autobiography is currently being written. Sean is our last remaining link to huge parts of our history. He was there, participating in the decision process, on so many of the things we now take for granted. The research, preparation and publicity surrounding his autobiography will be an opportunity to make sure younger generations get to appreciate the great resource he is. Let’s hope we get a CQN interview one day.
Sighs of relief will be heard around many dens of iniquity as Rangerstaxcase sails into the sunset; well done on excellent work. RTC’s “99% crap” has teased, entertained and informed for over a year. History is already being rewritten, but the inescapable fact is that Rangers diaspora were far better served by RTC than by the army of cheerleaders Sir David Murray or Craig Whyte depended upon to make their work possible.
The ‘buy lots of raffle tickets’ message if for you, b.t.w. so what are you waiting on, they are only £1 each!!!
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Can’t be?
Get in the hole!
podium?
podium?
Yasssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!
That was an annoying Americanism for the gowfers.
Hopr you all have a great day at the golf and raise alot of money for the good causes
argh ! Well done Hector on winning the bronze medal play-off
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/celtic/9439310/SFA-writes-to-Rangers-chief-executive-Charles-Green-to-explain-bigotry-comments.html
What´s wrong with this link ?
At first I was surprised at Ewing Grahame recent backbone transplant and then I though Mmmhhhhhhhhhhh……….. Nobody mentioned religious bigotry only you Ewing and then I seen under what section and what club badge the English/the world are reading this article under.
Outrageous
DO not be fooled by Ewing Grahame or Roddy Forsyrh .. unqualified scum
Hail Hail
Can’t be with you on the Gowf Day.
I’m sure Taggsybhoy will have it better organised than Lord Coe has the seats for the Olympics though.
Paul67
What do you make of the news that Sevco Scotland Limited are now THE rangers Football Club.
Makes you wonder who actually played Brechin on Sunday.
Sevcomedia planning dastardly deeds:
“Underhand Tactics Required To Fight For Our Club
For some time now, I have felt that there must be more we could be doing to out those corrupt b******s at the SPL/SFA, who are conniving to kill us off.
Rhegan is now less of a threat since we now have our license. He can be dealt with in good time.
Doncaster and his new found allegiance with the Slitty-Eyed Toptaig who is really running Scottish fitbaw, are more of an immediate threat to us due to their sneaky, underhand plans to strip our titles.
We need to use every dirty trick we can to get the proof that will destroy Liewells plans. Whether its bribery, blackmail, or any other way to find any skeletons that they have hidden away.
Even historically. By all accounts, the Kelly family lied and cheated for years during their tenure at [Celtic].
[Celtic Park] and Hampden must be full of low paid office staff. Cleaners, tea ladies, secretaries, caterers etc. I wonder if any of them would have access to emails, pictures, documents or conversation and could be bought off, maybe using some of the RFFF funds.
Any little snippets we can find on these ****s should be posted up on forums, face book, twitter etc. The more shit we throw at them, the more chance that some of it will stick.
People can be vetted for any possible chance that they might support our cause. They can be approached and offers made.
It makes you wonder if that’s how the BBC, Channel 4 and the rest of our enemies have gathered the so called “proof” to help their crusade in hammering us. I’m sure they have in some way or other.
Imagine if the thread in here today with the pictures of liewell and doncasters sneaky meeting had been on video, and we could actually hear what was being said,……….
Imagine if at the next SPL board meeting, a tiny camera, hidden in a plant pot could be recording every word of their corrupt plans to stitch us and the SFL clubs up and the footage leaked onto YouTube. That would nail their coffin firmly shut and prove that the corruption in our game, that we so much difficulty in proving was rife.
Pens and wrist watches etc with tiny hidden HD cameras are available these days.
James Bond stuff, I know. But you know what………if Bond was a fan of a fitbaw team, you can guarantee it would be the most Quintessentially British Club in the land.”
up_over_goal on 31 July, 2012 at 11:39said:
Not from my seat :-)
We’ll agree to differ, I think.
Just read that old Charlie bhoy still maintains that “The Rangers” have 140 years of history……..had a wee chuckle to myself…….deluded, deluded, deluded. Will they ever learn???? Probably not with muppets like Charlie in charge. He is obviously pandering to the mass hordes of brain donors that followed oldco (1873), and will now form the basis of “The Rangers” (2012) support.
Paul67 I think you should fire a link to one of your articles explaining why that is not the case……or maybe it has slipped Charlie’s mind his mind that he already said so himself.
Anyway, happy birthday Sean Fallon!
HH
CTTC
There will be no spare seats at Aberdour on Friday. And I’m sure the competition will be of the same high standard as always.
I’ll post a link to some photos of both the golf and the evening’s entertainment over the weekend.
DontPatmadug on 31 July, 2012 at 11:44 said:
ASonOfDan on 31 July, 2012 at 10:19 said:
Quite a few of the Arsenal blogs seem to be getting very excited about our Victor. £10 Million and a cut of any future transfer fees and they can have him. When you have only played one season and start talking about moving on, your heart is not going to be in it when push comes to shove.
—————-
Sadly that is going to be the way of it more money and a better profile available down south, But we found him and I am sure there are gems out there waiting to be picked up. £10m would be a great return although if we get into the CL group would like the boy to stay for one more season. May even push his price up.
Although a different type of player would like to see what Ibrahim could do in a competitive game.
so charlie green will have to explaine his comments to the sfa
they not even have full membership and they think they are back at the top after 1 game at brechin
what about the sevco fans behaviour at brechin ?
got chatting to two sevco fans at work
they said that all the spl teams will suffer and will miss their fans
and that the spl will be boring with a 1 horse race
just had to point out that the 2 horse buissness model did not work were 1 team defrauded the tax payer of over £100 million pounds just to even compete
and as for missing sevco fans ,most of the teams fans threatened to boycott their own stadiums if they played there
thus they did not even want to be in the same place as them ever
procceded to tell them their last 2 owners ran them into the ground and how
long would it take charlie
response was back to the we are the most successful club in the world
with the biggest support in the uk
on that note had to get back to work before they started with watp
they just do not get it……..stupid stupid huns
jam67
Happy Birthday Sean Fallon
Hail Hail
Monaghan1900
Tell me that is made up? The nugget should get a visit from The Focus Task Force soon I hope.
Funny how it is now Celtic’s fault and not Sir Minty or Whyte.
Stupid huns…
Corruption allegations, major fraud inquiries, links to pornographic magazines … and a luxury yacht. Welcome to the world of banking 2012
By Ian Fraser
http://www.ianfraser.org
Police are poised to press charges against several HBOS bankers and consultants after a two-year investigation into large-scale fraud, money laundering and corruption involving the Edinburgh-based bank.
Thames Valley Police has already handed evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service. The papers have since been reviewed by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer and Attorney General Dominic Grieve. The Sunday Herald has learned that the charges – expected to include corruption and money laundering – are due to be pressed within weeks.
The probe, code-named “Operation Hornet“, is described by one of the police officers involved as “the largest fraud investigation of its type in the UK”. Under way since June 2010, it has been led by Thames Valley Police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
An initial nine suspects, including two HBOS bankers, were arrested and put on police bail between September and December 2010. The former HBOS senior executive Lynden Scourfield and his wife, Jacqueline were among those detained. Others arrested included David Mills (pictured left), a former NatWest banker, who co-founded “turnaround” specialist Quayside Corporate Services in 2002, and other former Quayside consultants including his wife Alison, Michael Bancroft, Tony Cartwright and Marcello Alessi. Quayside, which was wound up in March 2010, was never a member of any professional institute and was not even contracted to the bank. None of the suspects have yet been charged.
The alleged crimes occurred mainly between 2002 and 2006, when Sir James Crosby was chief executive and Lord Stevenson was chairman of the Edinburgh-based HBOS, which has been owned by Lloyds Banking Group since its September 2008 near demise. At the time, a common business practice involved Bank of Scotland Corporate, sometimes arbitrarily, transferring business customers’ accounts to its “high-risk” division, overseen by Scourfield.
Based in BoS Corporate’s Reading office, Scourfield is said to have forced between 50 and 200 customer firms who were referred his way to appoint Quayside consultants as directors with full fiduciary powers on their boards. Many of the directors of affected firms say he threatened to “shut down” their businesses unless they complied.
In 1991, two Quayside consultants – Tony Cartwright and Michael Bancroft – misappropriated some £1.5 million from Ritz Design Group, a listed supplier to Marks & Spencer at which they were finance director and chairman respectively. The matter was investigated by accountants Deloitte, but it is understood they repaid the funds, and the pair were not prosecuted.
Within months of Quayside taking control of the firms, Scourfield and BoS Corporate provided generous additional facilities and loans, even though some of the firms were near technical insolvency. At textiles group Magenta Studios, it is claimed that Quayside prepared a phoney business plan with a view to persuading Scourfield’s superiors that additional lending was appropriate. Quayside consultants put several of the companies concerned at risk for example by delaying critical payments to suppliers while prioritizing payments to themselves.
Overall, BoS loaned an estimated £1bn plus to Quayside-controlled firms. A significant portion of the additional funding was squandered on inappropriate acquisitions or removed in fees and disbursements to Quayside and its consultants. Ownership of some of the Quayside-linked firms’ prized assets – including most of the top-shelf titles of pornographic magazine empire Remnant Media, publisher of Asian Babes – were transferred to off-the-shelf companies linked to Mills and his Quayside colleagues.
Mills spent some of the £113m that was loaned by BoS to executive aviation group Corporate Jet Services, where he was chairman, on the Powder Monkey, a 100ft luxury yacht with a full-time crew of five. The yacht (pictured right) was kept in the south of France and was meant to be for marketing the aviation group, but sources suggest it was predominantly used by Mills, his family and friends. The yacht is currently for sale through Sunseeker London for €2.35m (£1.83m).
People who have been interviewed by Thames Valley Police are said to include a London-based madam and a number of prostitutes who sources claim were hired by Quayside-controlled businesses to “entertain” BoS’s Scourfield. The bill was picked up by BoS-funded porn empire Remnant Media and labelled as “corporate entertainment”.
In many cases, the affected companies’ total borrowings from HBOS increased tenfold within a couple of years of Mills and Quayside becoming involved, with many having their credit lines increased from £3m to £4m to between £30m and £40m by the time of their 2007 collapses.
Other companies allegedly destabilised, maltreated, or asset-stripped by Quayside included the Bristol-based packaging group Bradman Lake, ecological nappy firm Cotton Bottoms, textile business Multi-Sourcing Group, nightclub and restaurant groups Mezzanine Group, sporting goods manufacturer Seoul Nassau and fishing tackle specialist, Speyside Angling Supplies.
In about September 2006, insiders report that Bank of Scotland Corporate’s head of distressed assets Tom Angus “discovered” serious irregularities and “control failures” in the high-risk division. But instead of informing the police, the bank instructed executives Fraser Kelly and Andrew Scott to “hive down” Scourfield’s circa £1 billion loan book.
The bank used leading accountancy firms including KPMG, PWC, Hurst Morrison Thomson and Menzies Corporate Restructuring (now Duff & Phelps) to close down the firms. Days before one of the firms was put into administration, emails suggest that Quayside executives transferred thousands of pounds in cash into their personal bank accounts and, in at least two cases, they destroyed financial records.
In March, KPMG revealed Mills was the biggest individual creditor of collapsed investment firm MF Global, where he had parked £3.65m. From October 2006 to November 2007 Quayside was owned by Parkmead, a boutique investment bank that counted former energy minister Brian Wilson among its directors.
Many legitimate owner/managers of affected firms have lost everything as a result of the alleged wrongdoing. The bank has sought to evict Paul and Nikki Turner, directors of Cambridgeshire-based music business Zenith Cafe, from their home in 22 separate court hearings. The couple argue their financial difficulties are entirely due to egregious wrongdoing by BoS and Quayside. In a bizarre twist, HBOS created a fake bank account in the name of Zenith Cafe Ltd, from which it debited £372,000 of legal costs relating to its failed attempts to repossess the Turners’ home.
Nikki Turner said: “Lloyds Banking Group has always been 100% aware of how bad the HBOS Reading situation was, was – particularly as they have read and agreed to the publishing of the six redacted paragraphs in the ‘Final Notice Public Censure of the BoS’ on 9th March 2012 which specifically relate to HBOS Reading. But the bank continues to be firmly in denial about the severity of this.
“I wonder which part of the Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) principles for business the Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio thinks entitles him to refuse to correspond any further or deal responsibly and fairly with Reading and other matters.”
One director who lost his business as a result of the scandal said: “If these guys are not charged in 2012, we’re going to go nuclear. There a lots of very important people waiting for justice here”
Another director of a victimised company alleged: “The FSA’s main agenda has been to try and cover this thing up, since it exposes the catastrophic failures in its own approach to regulating the banking sector. They fined Barclays £60m over Libor – what have they done about this? Sweet FSA.”
Thames Valley Police spokesman Chris Kearney said: “The nine suspects remain on police bail. They are due to answer their bail in late September. A decision will be taken at that time whether to rebail them, charge them, or release them without further incident.”
A spokesman for Lloyds Banking Group said: “We cannot comment on the detail of this investigation by Thames Valley Police. Bank of Scotland itself is not the subject of the investigation. We have been assisting the police with their investigation.”
Gordon_J backing Neil Lennon
Will those photo’s be taken by an ordinary camera or a secret spy watch?
Monaghan1900 on 31 July, 2012 at 11:45 said:
Sevcomedia planning dastardly deeds:
>>>>>>>>>>
Oh well…..meet the Newco,same as the Oldco….they will never learn.
The certifiably insane can only cavort in the streets for so long in this age of motorised transport before a juggernaut smashes into them ; the FTT result and the EBT investigation should provide that juggernaut for the huns.
Maybe it’ll be fuelled by the money-laundering scandal,should that oily mess ever have the light of truth shone upon it.
HH !
Congratulations from Tommy from Glasgow on presenting the world with the news that BDO will not even start until September. I wonder if its true as he was talking to a professional liar
Hail Hail
Celtic’s Man of Iron
Sean in action against now extinct football team
A few have been posting here recently re lack of signings.Stokes might not make it tomorrow,who partners Hooper up front? 4-5-1,which we can’t play and we should have 2 up front anyway.Watt ? inexperienced and IMO should have been part of recent friendlies.Bangura ? Sorry,I can’t see a player there at all.Sammi ? much more effective on the left side. Commons ? If fit I can see him playing up front,not ideal.So,there we have it,1 striker injured and Plan B is ??
Monaghan1900 on 31 July, 2012 at 11:45 said:
Sevcomedia planning dastardly deeds:
————————————————-
http://spytech.in/home/images/stories/slideshow/chronograph-spy-camera-watch_2.jpg
this would do the trick
ASonOfDan, I missed that news, do you have a link?
Many Happy Returns and Congratulations to Sean.
Lang may yir lum continue to reek!
HAIL! HAIL!
Token
!!Bada Bing!!
Mr Lawwell is too busy negotiating Sky/Espn television deals at the moment.
I’ll have a word with him when he gets back.
Italian cyberspace transfer rumor mongers continue to peddle —
Victor Wanyama to Arsenal .
Victor Wanyama to Manchester United.
Why ?
Both are unwilling to pay the asking price for ” potential trouble off the field ” M’ Vila.
Both need a defensive midfielder ..
2 and 2 makes 5 -way down south
James Bond would not be able to support the EX Huns as he was laid off because they didn’t pay their taxes…
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo on 31 July, 2012 at 11:54 said:
>>>>>>>
Makes you sick eh ? And this is just one small piece in the mosaic of the bankster/gangster economy. One day…one day..
Re Sean Fallon
I met him in 1980 when he was invited to my school (St Francis in The Gorbals) by our Heidy Mr Kenny to do a talk on Football and his life. It was one of the many such evening he arranged with guests such as Mr Stein, Billy McNeill and Craig Brown.
He was a great story teller, but an even greater football tactition. I was transfixed by his explanation of tactics, the fact that a few weeks later I sat and listened to Mr Stein doing the same opened my 10 year old self to a whole new understanding of football.
Mr Kenny, thank you for giving me footballing lessons by true footballing giants and Craig Brown.
Happy Birthday Sean!!!
Revealed: the hornet and the sting which are stopping us learning the truth about the collapse of HBOS
By Ian Fraser
Published: Sunday Herald
Date: February 26th, 2012
http://www.ianfraser.org
Results released last Friday showed a sea of red ink engulfing the state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group. Trumpeted at the time of its September 2008 formation as the “bank for Britain”, the 41%-taxpayer owned business unveiled annual losses of £3.5 billion for 2011, nearly double those RBS announced the previous day.
With the commentary focusing on the fallout from payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal, and bleak economic conditions helping to dash chief executive António Horta-Osório’s hopes of achieving a return-on-equity of more than 12.5% by 2014, it is no surprise that few noticed a bland statement buried on page 195 of the 204-page results news release.
In a section titled “Contingent liabilities and commitments” Lloyds referred to “enforcement proceedings against Bank of Scotland plc in relation to its corporate division pre-2009. The proceedings are ongoing and the group is co-operating fully. It is too early to predict the outcome or estimate reliably any potential financial effects of the enforcement proceedings…”
Here, then is the answer to the real story of the near collapse of HBOS and (subsequently) Lloyds and about why Lloyds’ future prospects remain so opaque. The three sentences hold the key to understanding why the Financial Services Authority, despite much prodding from Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee, considers itself incapable of producing a report into the reasons for the September 2008 collapse of the Edinburgh-based institution, which carried 300 years of Scottish commercial history.
For all the widespread criticism of the influence of Fred Goodwin’s lawyers and others, the FSA’s December 2011 report into the reasons for the collapse of RBS went some way towards creating “closure” for those affected by the October 2008 near-collapse of HBOS’s larger rival. But the FSA, chaired by Lord Turner, last month indicated that, where HBOS is concerned, and despite promises to the contrary, no such closure is going to be possible for the foreseeable future.
Adair Turner told the Treasury Select Committee last month that it’s so-called “enforcement proceedings” might be prejudiced if the regulator were to embark on researching and writing a comprehensive report on reasons for HBOS’s collapse, including an exploration of the FSA’s own failure to properly regulate and supervise the Edinburgh-based institution.
Turner, a fleet-footed former vice-chairman of the investment bank Merrill Lynch Europe, who has been FSA chairman since September 2008, told MPs: “We should produce a report, or somebody should produce a report on HBOS. In timing terms, we have the complication…that we have an enforcement process in place…and until that is produced we cannot produce the report.
“In summary, I believe that we should produce something on HBOS which is equivalent to [the RBS report]. The good news is it should be shorter, because it is a simpler business…”
Well up to a point. The enforcement action to which Turner referred is understood to include ‘Operation Hornet’ a major fraud investigation led by Thames Valley Police and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, which began after an in-depth Sunday Herald report in November 2008.
Hornet is investigating alleged money laundering, corruption and large-scale fraud linked to the “distressed assets” division of HBOS’s Bank of Scotland Corporate unit, which came under the direction of the well-connected banker Peter Cummings, centred on its Reading branch. A total of nine people have been arrested so far but none have yet been charged with any offence. No charges or allegations have been made against Cummings in relation to the Reading affair or any other matter.
Suspects in the case are alleged to have siphoned off and laundered an estimated £1bn lent by HBOS to up to 200 customer accounts. They are also alleged to have expropriated assets worth scores of millions and, in a series of administrations and other deals, were allowed by the bank to take ownership of many of the surviving assets.
Thames Valley Police last night declined to comment on the ongoing police inquiry.
In June 2010 the FSA confirmed it had commenced its own enforcement probe investigation into the HBOS Reading scandal, under section 168 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. The FSA also continues to pursue various other investigations and enforcement proceedings into the wider HBOS group, with a particular focus on its corporate department.
After creating a complex lattice-like network of joint-venture companies with often high-profile borrowers in “frothy” sectors including property development, retail and private equity, Cummings and his team lent out a staggering £116 billion.
Cummings, already a director of various HBOS subsidiaries and off-balance-sheet-vehicles including Uberior Investments, became a director of some 147 of the joint venture companies in which HBOS had or has significant stakes, and to which it also lent many billions of pounds. The blurring of the boundaries between lender and borrower (with Cummings chairing the credit committee that weighed up whether or not to lend to companies 49% owned by the bank, on whose boards Cummings or other HBOS executives sat) led at best to the mispricing of risk and at worst to serious conflicts of interest.
The partners in HBOS’s galaxy of joint-ventures included well-known entrepreneurs such as Geoff Ball of Cala, Sir Rocco Forte of RF Hotels, Sir Philip Green of Arcadia and Top Shop, Sir Tom Hunter of West Coast Capital, Sir David Murray of Murray International Holdings, Paul Kemsley of Rock Investments, John Kennedy of Kenmore, Kevin McCabe of Teesland and Scarborough Development Group, Donald Macdonald of Macdonald Hotels, Sandy Orr of City Inns, the Reuben Brothers of Sapphire Retail Fund, David Sutherland of Tulloch and Iain Wotherspoon of Kilmartin. None of these individuals is known to be connected to Operation Hornet and no suggestion of impropriety has been made against them at any time.
After Lloyds’ black horse had saddled itself with Cummings’ poisonous legacy Tim Tookey, finance director of the enlarged group, concluded that an astounding £80bn or 69% of the £116bn Peter Cummings and his team had lent was “outside Lloyds TSB’s risk appetite”. One of the issues was that some of the loans had been dressed up as equity or hybrid capital in order to mislead regulators and enable HBOS to minimise the amount of loss-absorbing capital it needed to set aside.
Business people have been urging the FSA to properly investigate alleged unorthodox activities inside HBOS’s corporate lending arm since as early 2005.
The Sunday Herald has obtained a copy of a letter dated February 21, 2005 from one Scottish businessman asking the FSA “whether the operations of a secret bank account held in the British Virgin Islands, called Charlotte 18, was acting in the best interests of the customers and shareholders of The Bank of Scotland … Were money laundering processes and procedures being clearly followed?”
The letter also asked whether it was appropriate that the bank was using “assets to cover up the bad debts caused by the collapse of a company run by the former managing director of the Bank of Scotland”. Separately the letter raised concerns about the dual role of Sir James Crosby as chief executive of HBOS and as a director of the FSA.
Like others, the complaint fell on deaf ears at the FSA’s Canary Wharf HQ. The regulator responded by saying that it did not police “business models”. Since the 2008 banking crisis, the regulator has marginally toughened up its act and appears to have gained the beginnings of an appetite for probing the darker corners of the labyrinthine network of joint venture companies formed under Cummings’ rule.
It therefore came as a surprise when, last year, it emerged that the FSA had attempted to persuade Peter Cummings to agree to a voluntary ban from working in the City in exchange for dropping its investigation into his time as HBOS’s head of corporate banking. Cummings refused to accept the deal, saying that if any evidence of wrongdoing were to be found, he should be prosecuted accordingly and if it were not, the regulator should clear his name. It was also reported in January that Cummings was fighting with the regulator to prove that the whole HBOS board, including its former chairman Lord Stevenson, shared responsibility for the duff loans.
Julian Stevens, managing partner of Bristol-based financial advisory firm Harvest IFM, who like many IFAs is disillusioned by what he sees as the FSA’s wilful blindness to alleged frauds inside large banks, believes that the regulator favours such a deal to avoid its own regulatory failures being brought further into the limelight.
Stevens said: “The reason the FSA doesn’t want to go to court is that its own failings would very probably come under the spotlight so, by offering a deal, it gets the other side alone to admit culpability and pay up without anybody else finding out about the extent to which its own regulatory negligence contributed to things going as badly wrong as they did.”
In November 2009, it also emerged that the FSA was conducting a supervisory review scrutinising disclosures made by HBOS’ board to shareholders and investors prior to the HBOS rights issue in 2008.
Leading Treasury Select Committee member Michael Fallon disputes Turner’s assertion that enforcement proceedings preclude a wider overview-style report into what went wrong at HBOS. Fallon, who is also deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, said the delay into publishing a report into HBOS’s collapse is unacceptable.
He told the Sunday Herald: “Most members of the Treasury committee were furious at the FSA’s initial failure to publish a proper report into RBS. Having won that round, there’s now immense frustration at the length of time the FSA is taking to produce a report on HBOS.”
“If the enforcement action means we’re going to wait for two years before a comprehensive HBOS report can be produced,” said Fallon, “then I would say there’s a very strong case for the production of a partial report focusing on the regulatory side.”
Fallon, MP for Sevenoaks since 1997, added that such a report should “focus on identifying where the regulatory failures occurred”.
He said: “the FSA must, surely, be able to distinguish between enforcement proceedings relating to the actions of officers and former officers of the bank, which could culminate in court cases which could take months if not years, and making clear where its own regulatory failures occurred. We need to know whether there was inexcusable regulatory oversight.”
Another member of the Treasury select committee, Jesse Norman MP, agreed that it ought to be possible to produce an overview report into the reasons for the collapse of HBOS, and the related regulatory failures at the FSA, before the on-going enforcement and criminal proceedings are completed.
He cited the report conducted by Lord Bingham into the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in 1991-92 which ended up being heavily focused on the supervisory role of Bank of England. “That was a model of its kind. There was no requirement to subpoena anyone and everyone was treated confidentially. The related criminal proceedings were not settled for a decade or more”.
One senior Scottish businessman said: “The rot set at Bank of Scotland in when the likes of Gavin Masterton and Peter Cummings started handing millions of pounds to their pals, without doing much in the way of due diligence.
“Remember that any banker who lends money to a business that is trading whilst insolvent – meaning, a business that is unable to pay its bills when they fall due – might be considered to be complicit in criminal acts. Any director of a bank that kept insolvent companies – including football clubs – afloat in this way was recklessly putting shareholders and depositors’ money at risk.”
The case for a public inquiry
Last month Turner as good as admitted that the FSA may not be the appropriate body to investigate the collapses of banks that it failed to adequately regulate. On January 30, he told the Treasury Select Committee that it may not bee too late launch a public inquiry into all of the UK’s bank failures, including those of RBS and HBOS.
Turner told MPs: “You could argue that if we could all roll it back to 2009, we ought to have launched a Royal Commission, which would have looked at absolutely everything, including each of the banks that failed, all together rather than one by one, and at the role of all three authorities [Treasury, Bank of England and FSA]. I think there could be merit in that at some stage.
This added weight to growing calls for a Leveson-style public inquiry into banks that failed. Others who have called for such an independent no-holds-barred inquiry include Tony Shearer, former chief executive of Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, Paul Moore, former head of regulatory risk at HBOS, and the former Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell.
In their view, Britons will never regain trust in their banks until the reasons for their failures are properly investigated, and from a wholly independent and unbiased standpoint.
Writing in his blog Campbell said: “The consequences [of the UK’s bank failures] have been greater and for more people than the phone hacking scandal which has rightly led to an inquiry into the practices of the modern media …
“I expect that one day [David Cameron] will have to set up a banking inquiry too. There has been no sense of closure on what happened … it could look at the whole picture – the role of politicians, regulators, credit ratings agencies, bankers, the lot.
“Unless it happens, and unless it leads to change the public anger will not subside, the politicians will continue to respond to it in a piecemeal way, and we’ll end up learning next to nothing.”
Pat McFadden Scots-born Labour MP for Wolverhampton Southeast and another member of the Treasury Select Committee, said the danger in allowing the FSA to conduct inquiries into UK bank failures was that it ended up with a lot of “self-justification”.
McFadden said: “When a regulator does these sorts of reports, the temptation is for it to place the blame in places other than on its own doorstep”.
Julian Stevens, managing partner of Bristol-based financial advisory firm Harvest IFM and a long-standing critic of the FSA, said he would welcome a Leveson-style inquiry into the banking crisis. He said: “That would be a good idea but it would only have real validity if it was ruthlessly impartial.”
CelticWiki:
Sean Fallon played a pivotal role for Celtic. Fallon was the man whom the players could confide and turn to when needed. Jock was a hard man but also very much fatherly, and this could mean some tough love at times. Sean Fallon helped to compliment him for the first team in coaching and player management.
What these men brought about at Celtic is a story that everyone knows. A European Cup and 9-in-a-row to the East End of Glasgow. Winning all of 5 competitions entered in 1967 was an amazing achievement, but typical of the man:
“I’m proud that we achieved something no other team has but it was just all about living the dream with my club.” – Sean Fallon
Together they turned the club into a giant fortress of which we all are in their debt to. Fallon’s part in the club’s success can never be underestimated. Every great manager has a great man to work along with him, and for Jock it was Sean. The problem is that we are all so much in awe of Jock Stein that we have generally overlooked Sean’s part in all the great success. That needs some realignment. Sean is deserving of every plaudit possible.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/ian-fraser-will-we-finally-see-some-bank-board-members-face-the-music.html
“Ninetieth birthday parties do not come around every day”
True dat .
HH ! Sean Fallon. HH x 90 !