Transparency International and the Blackrock Sovereign Risk Index
I’d never heard of Transparency International until yesterday, when it was interviewed about corruption in Moscow and the problems of investing there on the BBC.
They publish a Corruption Perception Index for around 180 countries world-wide. The link points to their data for 2010. It is interesting reading.
The Blackrock Sovereign Risk Index does what it says on the tin and says how dodgy it is to deal in sovereign risk for various countries.
I wonder if the two are related, in that is a country low on the Country Perception Index, high on the Blackrock Sovereign Risk Index?
I shall be doing some investigating.
Where is the Wunch Now?
So Fred Goodwin has got his comeuppance, but do you ever wonder where all the others, who are part of the same wunch of bankers as Fred, who got us into the financial mess are?
I am indebted to Citywire for the details.
It is interesting reading.
Scotland on Sir Fred
Whilst searching for Scotland’s reaction to Sir Fred’s fall from grace, I found this page in the Glasgow Herald.
There are some funny bits, including one, about how you toast a haggis if you’re teetotal.
But this bit on Sir Fred’s Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh is priceless.
After The Herald revealed that disgraced banker Sir Fred Goodwin may have his Fellowship from the august Royal Society of Edinburgh removed, reader John Duffy in Edinburgh suggests: “Could they not just downgrade him to an Associate, just for the pleasure of seeing a more appropriate set of letters after his name.”
I’m not sure if he’s actually lost his Fellowship.
Bob Diamond Has Kept Quiet
In all the pontifications about Stephen Hester of RBS, I can’t find anything that Bob Diamond of Barclays has said.
Perhaps he’s just being sensible or he has not responded to any journalist, who’s asked what he thinks!
could it be a pointer to something? Or if he says nothing, then he won’t have to refute what he said or change his mind.
Who’s To Blame for the Eurocrisis?
I just found this rather deep and thorough approach on the BBC.
To summarise, it says that because France and Germany cooked the books, with Gordon Brown’s help, to get round the Maastrict rules, that it is now acceptable for anybody to overspend.
What Do You Get When You Cross Good Engineering With Good Financial Skills?
February’s Modern Railways magazine has an interesting article about how a whole new lengthened set of trains are being created to work the South West London services for South West Trains.
Currently these services are worked by 4-car Class 458 and Class 450 trains.
For various reasons South West Trains want to go to a 10-car railway, which would mean the simplest solution would be to lengthen the Class 450s to 5-cars and run them in pairs as required. But this would require upwards of about a hundred new carriages and typically these cost about a million pounds each.
But then Porterbrook’s engineers and managers got involved and suggested using the redundant purpose built fleet of 8-car Gatwick Express Class 460 that were surplus to requirements to lengthen the Class 458’s to 5-car trains. This is possible as both sets of trains were built by Alstom to a common design.
So South West Trains will get what they want at a lesser cost and probably earlier too.
The irony is that Porterbrook, is basically a train leasing company and not an engineering one.
So next time you ask, what have bankers done for us, look at a clever piece of work like this. But then it was probably led by engineers who understood money, rather than bankers who understood engineering.
All of the best engineers I’ve worked with always understood the monetary implications of what they did! Some also understood marketing too!
Peston on RBS Bonuses
Robert Peston at the BBC is a financial commentator I respect. His post today, in response to the news that the Chairman of RBS, Sir Philip Hampton, has turned down his bonus, should be read by all. According to Peston, Sir Philip didn’t actually request a bonus in his contract.
Well, the additional reward for Sir Philip was always something slightly unusual, which – as it happens – he didn’t request when he took the job three years ago. This shares incentive had already been agreed in negotiations with another candidate to chair RBS (Lord Davies, the former Standard Chartered chief executive, who ultimately turned the job down), and Sir Philip just attached his moniker to a contract drafted for someone else.
That sounds like a cock-up by the previous government to me.
Peston goes on to have a dig at the lack of talent available and also headhunters, whose interest is best served by high salaries. The first point is proven by looking at how many banks the world are in trouble and the second is well-known to anybody who’s ever hired anybody through a headhunter or an agency.
I think we’ll only know how good Hester and his co-directors are, when RBS is sold off.
More on Stehen Hester and That Bonus
He is a rich man in his own right. If I was him, I’d tell the stupid politicians I didn’t want the bonus, resign and tell them, where to put their job. I would know that I’d done a good job and could take my pick of a lot of well-paid jobs out there.
If that happened, it would cost all the UK Taxpayers even more and who would most politicians blame. David Cameron and the Tory members of this current government, who have nothing to do with this mess. RBS was such a state in 2010, that it should have been liquidated. But Gordon Brown needed the votes! Especially in Scotland!
Zopa In Hard Times
I have been examining my detailed figures on Zopa, the peer-to-peer lending site I use to hold my deposit account money. You’d think that the real interest, I’d be getting would be lower than it was last year, as reading the papers and you’d think that everybody was going belly-up. But surprisingly in January the real interest, which is actual interest paid out, adjusted for any bad debts, has risen by about a percentage point. And I’m still waiting for the big payments that come at the end of every month, around the 25th!
So why could this be?
I think that it’s partly due to the improved lending policy of the company, in that bad borrowers are less likely to be loaned money and over the last couple of years, the dodgy customers have not got loans. And of course for every dodgy customer who doesn’t get a loan, there is more money to lend out to good ones!
Or it could be that those who have loans out with reputable banks and companies, make sure that whatever they do, they make certain they repay the loan?
I do think though, that this improvement will probably apply to all banks and companies that do personal loans in a professional and traditional manner. So as banks are constantly being criticised for not lending enough money could it be that they’re doing the right thing?
To return to Zopa, I also have noted that I have not picked up a loan using their Rapid Return system for eight months. This system allows good loans to be effectively sold on to other lenders.
It may be that I’ve not been lucky in picking one up, but it could be that people like the Zopa rates and would prefer to live off the interest rather than cash in the loans.
I don’t know, but it does seem to me that Zopa is getting to be a better investment and that the majority of the good British public are not as stupid ass they are made out.
Credit Unions
THe BBC is plugging credit unions this morning. I am all for that, as I think they are a good alternative to banks for a lot of people with simple financial needs.
but type in “credit union Hackney” into Google and you get this message.
Hackney Credit Union has ceased trading and the branch has closed.
So not a good start!
Type in “find credit union hackney” and you get some assorted credit check and loan adverts.
You do get this page from Hackney Council, which tells you about credit unions. But it doesn’t give the branches in the borough.
So unless you know about credit unions and where one is located, you haven’t really got much help.
If we want to get more people to use credit unions, then they must get control of the Internet. Especially typing “find credit union” should not get a loan shark.
Credit unions are much more successful in the US, but then they are much bigger with probably more branches. Look at the web site of the Credit Union of Southern California. IT certainly doesn’t look to be a small organisation. Where is the Londonwide credit union?
Could it be that the banks have got their friends in Government to effectively ban them?
The Anonymous Widower 