In Financial Regulation Matters we have covered the story of the disgraced GRG unit within RBS from the moment that the scandal was publicised, and recently that case has taken a particularly disappointing turn. In other news from the Banking sector, Lloyds have been forced to set aside even more money to cover PPI claims made against them, bring the prospective to total to more than £19 billion. In this post, we will assess these stories and examine what they may mean for the continuing lack of trust that the public have in the Banking sector. Starting with RBS, the bank have been in the midst of a number of legal claims regarding the conduct of its infamous GRG unit, which was set up to ‘help’ Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Last month the bank managed to fend off a claim from a Real Estate group regarding the mis-selling of interest rate swaps and manipulated interest rate benchmarks, and a couple of days ago managed to fend off a claim in the High Court from an SME

Owing to the dynamics of the academic year, there has been somewhat of a lull recently here in Financial Regulation Matters , so to get up to speed a round-up of developments within the banking sector seems like a good place to start. There have been a number of developments since the last post, so today we will work our way through them as efficiently as possible; the underlying sentiment is that the developments portray a sector that is consistently changing since the Crisis, with a number of aspects of that said Crisis continuing to play out (rather unsurprisingly). We start with our old friends RBS, who have taken up a large amount of space in Financial Regulation Matters , mostly on account of their remarkable development since the Crisis. Past posts have focused on the unique relationship that continues between the bank and the government (on account of its ownership of the bank), its terrible performance (alongside the FCA) in relation to its treatment of SMEs , and also

Yesterday Financial Regulation Matters was a year old and, coincidentally, a number of stories covered throughout the first year of the blog have had some significant developments over the past few days; so, in today’s post, we will have a whistle-stop tour of these developments and ask how the recent developments may impact upon a number of parties concerned with these impactful business stories. Samsung Heir Released from Prison On the 25 th August 2017, we assessed the impact of the changing political, legal, and business landscape within South Korea with the massive news that Lee Jae-yong, the heir to the massive Samsung empire, was to be imprisoned for five years on counts of bribery, embezzlement, and perjury amongst a whole host of criminal infractions as part of his attempt to consolidate his, and his company’s position as one of the leading ‘ chaebols ’. The news today, that Lee’s sentence was reduced to a suspended sentence after just a year in prison , should b

In today’s post the focus will be on the banking sector and, by focusing on three current issues, provides an overview of recent developments within this particular sector. By looking at the issues surrounding Barclays, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Lloyds, and RBS, a picture will be painted that details the need to ask much deeper questions about the role the banking sector plays within society and, perhaps more introspectively, the relationship between big business and humanity. Going through the issues in no particular order, the first stop in today’s journey takes us to Barclays, with the news emerging that Red Kite Management, the world’s largest metals hedge fund, is suing the British Bank for ‘ alleged market abuse in the copper market ’, which it claims has cost the company at least £650 million between 2010 and 2013. The company’s claim, according to documents filed with the High Court, is that the Bank allowed some of its staff to share confidential information with the Ba