Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

hendren global group stock fraud watch Any doubt over who calls the shots at Britain's part-nationalised banks has been dispelled by the fate of Stephen Hester. The RBS chief executive has been forced out at the behest of George Osborne. Forget the arms-length paraphernalia of the UKFI holding company. When ministers want the bailed-out banks to do something, they do it. That's as it should be, since the state (not the "taxpayer" as the media constantly intones) currently owns 81% and 39% of RBS and Lloyds TSB respectively. The problem is what they want to do with them - which is sell them off fast, regardless of the loss to the public purse or the damage to the economy. The chancellor is driven by a mixture of unbending ideology and raw electoral calculation. He and David Cameron are determined to start the largest privatisations in Britain's history by the end of 2014 - just in time for a 2015 election. The idea is to engineer a "Tell Sid" 1980s-style Thatcherite handout to the right kind of voters, while ensuring that the heresy of publicly owned banks is consigned to the nightmares of the 2008 market meltdown. Hester, who now stands to pocket an extra £5.6m after more than 40,000 RBS workers have lost their jobs, was insufficiently gung-ho for the scale of early sell-off Osborne regards as critical to Tory fortunes. His successor will get the message. Next week Osborne is expected to set out the kind of discounts he plans to offer for Lloyds shares. He's also toying with the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange's plan for a wider share giveaway. For the Tory leadership, it's a trade-off between the appearance of a public windfall and the risk of being seen again to stuff the pockets of the better-off as living standards plummet. In reality, it will be a fraud against the public and an attack on genuine economic recovery. The Brown government paid well over the odds to prevent the collapse of RBS and Lloyds in 2008. Now, Cameron and Osborne show every sign of