Natwest should have stuck to its guns and kept politics out of the City July 26, 2023 Even the most trigger-happy of football chairmen usually leave a few days or weeks in between expressing full confidence in a manager and giving them the heave. Natwest board supremo Lord Howard Davies gave Alison Rose a matter of hours. What happened between the announcement just before 6pm that the Natwest CEO would be staying, [...]
Alison Rose: How the first woman to lead a major British bank ran Natwest July 26, 2023 Dame Alison – or just Ms Rose as she was at the time – made history in 2019 when she became the first woman to take the top job at one of the UK’s big four banks. She took over a bank from New Zealander Ross McEwan, which had stabilised after the financial crisis nearly [...]
Alison Rose resigns as Natwest chief over Farage leak after midnight board drama July 26, 2023 Dame Alison Rose, the Natwest chief executive at the centre of a leaking scandal, resigned overnight after an extraordinary late-night board meeting – just hours after the bank’s Chairman issued a statement offering her their full confidence. Rose outed herself as the source of a BBC story into the finances of Nigel Farage, who had [...]
Demand picture for shipping ‘far worse than we had foreseen,’ analysts warn July 26, 2023 The demand picture for container shipping is “far worse” than predicted, analysts have warned, as the sector struggles with an oversupply of vessels ordered during the pandemic-era shipping boom. “There’s a really, really punishing demand environment and at the same time, they’re just not doing enough to reduce the amount of available capacity in the [...]
Rose has made a stupid error, but Natwest’s decision is fine for now July 26, 2023 Polticians getting grouchy about anonymous leaks – you couldn’t make it up. What Alison Rose has confessed to doing, in the white heat of a media storm, was unwise. Her job at the top of an FCA-regulated entity requires her to be alive to risk, integrity and professionalism, and on that note she has failed. [...]
New SFO director has ‘a massive mountain to climb’ as the anti-fraud agency looks to rebuild July 26, 2023 The new director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) faces a herculean task in rebuilding the agency’s reputation after a number of failures over the last few years, top City lawyers have warned. Earlier this month Nick Ephgrave, the former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was appointed as the next director of the agency [...]
Three quarters of UK small businesses want to spread their deposits after SVB collapse, research shows July 26, 2023 Three quarters of small businesses in the UK are considering spreading their deposits among a range of different banks following March’s banking crisis. According to new research from payments provider Neo, 75 per cent of UK SMEs are considering diversifying their bank pool while six per cent already have. Neo surveyed 100 CFOs and treasurers [...]
Small business confidence slumps amid rising rates and stubborn inflation July 26, 2023 Confidence among small businesses slumped in the second quarter as the impact of rising rates and a stalling economy hit SMEs. The Federation of Small Business’s (FSB) Small Business Index fell to minus 14.2 points in the second quarter, down 11.4 points in the first quarter of the year. The fall in confidence reflects the [...]
Are wages or profits to blame for the inflation crisis? July 26, 2023 A lot of energy has been wasted on finding the source of the near two-year long global inflation surge. It has resembled a cathartic process to help families and businesses come to terms with how damaging the cost of living crisis has been. First Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey drew scorn for demanding workers [...]
Poor tax scrutiny has enabled abuse and fraud, MPs warn July 26, 2023 Poor scrutiny of the “complex” tax system has led to relief abuse and even fraud, an influential finance committee of MPs have warned. The Treasury Committee is calling for a systematic review into the cost of over a thousand forms of tax relief which they say are “complex, un-costed and exploited” in a new report. [...]
