Friday, 1 May 2009

Treasury Committe report on the banking crisis

The UK's Treasury Select Committee just released its report on the banking crisis based on 17 evidence sessions and 800 pages of written evidence. For those of us who like this kind of thing it is a fascinating read.

Some highlights, as I don't have time now to do a whole piece ...

"The origins of the banking crisis were many and varied, including ... a misplaced faith in financial innovation."

"We deplore the behaviour of a number of those banks who have received so much public money and behaved in such an insensitive manner particularly to established customers."

Of the nine banks that were in the FTSE 100 in April 2007, five are wholly or partially in public ownership. The individual bank stories are outlined and make for sobering reading, for example RBS would have made a profit in 2008 but for the take over of ABN Amro, according to Sir Philip Hampton. RBS' losses were £24.1 billion in 2008.

More on this later but thought it worthwhile to point towards the report as it happened ...

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