As is well known, the directors of RBS threatened to resign if Alistair Darling blocks the bonuses they want to pay their traders; apparently they’ve had legal advice that this would breach their fiduciary duties – though the row […]

I’m sorry you’ve not heard from me for a week: it’s been a busy time. A busy time, too, for finance ministers, central bankers and treasury officials all over the western world as country after country started to break ranks […]

It’s becoming clearer every day that what we’re living through is the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s: Alistair Darling was right in his Isle of Lewis interview with the Guardian a month ago. Of course everyone’s looking to […]

I know it’s scarcely credible, but I was wrong in my guess that the government would legislate to avoid competition procedures entirely in the LLoyds TSB-HBOS merger: an anonymous commenter here, and Angelo Basu at ConservativeHome’s CentreRight […]

Last night it was reported that the FSA would act to clamp down on “short selling“; the objective obviously being to deter speculative attacks on banks such as those on HBOS that went on for some time before […]

The FSA is investigating what appears to have been a “trash and cash” operation relating to HBOS shares: this is where someone (perhaps a bank trader or a hedge fund) for a fee borrows shares, say in HBOS, promising […]

One of the things I omitted to comment on in my September slackness was Mervyn King’s explanation to the Commons Treasury Select Committee of why he couldn’t organise a secret takeover of Northern Rock bank, or give it covert support.