Eyebrows were raised when a man was awarded a knighthood despite being accused of being 'asleep at the wheel' by the Treasury Select Committee chairman John McFall as the UK fell over the fiscal cliff.
Sir Hector Sants was in charge of the Financial Services Authority when RBS, HBOS, Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, Alliance & Leicester and Dunfermline Building Society all failed leaving the UK taxpayers to pick up the tab.
In mitigation, Sir Hector said that the FSA was generally powerless and in the case of RBS it wasn't able to prevent them from buying ABN Amro for £40Bn which hastened the collapse of the bank. The Dutch bank ABN Amro turned out to be pretty much worthless. He also told the Treasury Select Committee inquiry that he personally ordered RBS’s former chief executive Fred Goodwin to raise fresh capital via a rights issue in order to help stave off the collapse. The £12Bn the bank raised from institutional and retail investors was almost entirely lost since the bank was bust five months later.
Sir Hector joined the FSA in 2004 and said "insider trading and market abuse have been top of his hit list" and he "introduced a more "pro-active" approach to regulation".
Despite being a 'powerless and ineffective institution' the pay at the FSA was excellent at £807,000 per year for Sir Hector.
Sir Hector won't be running the new 'Prudential Regulatory Authority' which will take over control from the FSA next year. He is moving to Barclays in January on a £3m package as Head of Compliance and Regulation. Sir Hector stepped down from the FSA in June this year in the same month the FSA fined Barclays £59.5m for manipulating the interbank borrowing rate (Libor).
UK declared debt has more than doubled under the leadership of Sir Hector and is reaching 100% of our GDP at over £1trillion pounds. Hidden debt ( PFI, public sector pensions, bank underwriting etc), is thought to be between £4trillion and £7trillion but may be higher.
But then, Monty, aren't all these ridiculous titles just handed out from one posh boy to another.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Noble Hector (I once had a dog called Hector), did at least occasionally turn up at his very well paid job to collect it.
I mean what did William do to get a dukehood, or what ever it's called) and an earlhood, and various and sundry other bits and pieces?
Oh he got born and latterly married a gold digger.
And that Cherry Blair got her for "services to women"...what's that then? Doing her incredibly well paid job as a barrister? Or being the money grubbing wife of a war criminal murdering thug? Incidentally, would it be politically correct to have someone given an honour for services to men?
The whole thing is a sickening fest of handing out baubles to people at the top, by people at the top. And to make it a bit more genuine looking they give some people who have dedicated their lives to helping others a low level award.
Like everything else in this horrible UK construct it makes me want to vomit. And the worst thing is that a whole pile of muppets think that it's lovely.
Just one last moan about it... despite the fact that everyone knew about him SIR Jimmy Saville????
Hi tris, yes it's all a farce. Gongs and baubles to keep them quiet as they know where the bodies are buried ( Sir Fred the Shred, Sir Jimmy etc.....)
ReplyDeleteThere are quite a lot of nobles who would qualify for a bauble for their 'services to men' ;)