Shredded: Inside RBS, The Bank That Broke Britain

by Ian Fraser

This is the definitive account of the Royal Bank of Scotland scandal.

For a few brief months in 2007 and 2009, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the largest bank in the world. Then the Edinburgh-based giant - having rapidly grown its footprint to 55 countries and stretched its assets to £2.4 trillion under its hubristic and delinquent former boss Fred Goodwin - crashed to earth.

In Shredded, Ian Fraser explores the series of cataclysmic misjudgments, the toxic internal culture and the 'light touch' regulatory regime that gave rise to RBS/NatWest's near-collapse. He also considers why it became the most expensive bank in the world to bail out and why a culture of impunity was allowed to develop in the banking sector.

This new edition brings the story up to date, chronicling the string of scandals that have come to light since taxpayers rescued RBS and concluding with an evaluation of the attempts of the bank's post-crisis chief executives, Stephen Hester and Ross McEwan, to dismantle Goodwin's disastrous legacy and restore the damaged institutions to health.

'A gripping account - RBS was a rogue business, operating in what had become a rogue industry, with the connivance of government. Read it and weep' – Martin Woolf, Financial Times

Genres: Finance, Business, Economics, History, Banking, Nonfiction, Politics

901 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2013

About the author

Ian Fraser has worked as a journalist for nearly 30 years, writing for titles including The Economist, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Independent, Reuters, Dow Jones, Daily Mail, Herald and Sunday Herald. From 1999 to 2009 he worked as financial editor at the newly launched, Glasgow-based Sunday Herald, and business editor of Sunday Times Scotland, closely following developments at the Royal Bank of Scotland and the wider finance sector. After 2009, he focused on covering the unfolding banking crisis as a freelance, working on several BBC documentaries including the Bafta-nominated RBS: Inside The Bank That Ran Out of Money. He also taught at Stirling University. Before becoming a journalist Ian worked in the ad industry in Edinburgh, London and Paris; on a mine in Greybull, Wyoming; and as a jackeroo on a Queensland, Australia sheep station. He was born in Edinburgh, is married with three children, and has a degree in English from St Andrews University. He is working on his second book.

Reviews

[Kirk Houghton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than Lehman Brothers, RBS is the most notorious example of hubris leading up to the 2008/09 banking meltdown. Its market capitalisation stood at £76 billion in May 2007 – more than every other listed Scottish firm put together – and the bank employed up to 200,000 people worldwide. By October 2008 it was worth only £16 billion and on the verge of collapse, relying on taxpayer support to keep it solvent.

CEO Fred Goodwin emerged from this mess as ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ and is the nearest thing this generation has to a James Bond-esque villain. Only last week the Scottish Crown Office announced ‘Fred the Shred’ and his fellow cronies will not face prosecution for misleading investors over a £12 billion rights issue in 2008, despite a five-year review and trawling through 160,000 documents. It seems RBS and its disgraced former-Emperor cannot stay out of the news for all the wrong reasons.

Ian Fraser’s epic inside story relies on up to 120 current and former employees of RBS, most of whom prefer to remain anonymous. But the biggest scoop is the author’s access to Sir George Matthewson (former CEO and Chairman who nominated Goodwin as his successor) and Iain Robertson (Non-Executive Chairman of the Corporate Banking & Financial Markets Division). This leaves Fraser with no shortage of rich accounts from the protagonists present during the crisis and, indeed, those that helped ferment it.

Fred Goodwin’s fall from grace should already be familiar to anyone with a passing interest in current affairs and an awareness of tabloid headlines over the last eight years. Fraser doesn’t dwell on the excesses, but reminds us that Fred spent a distasteful £18 million on Corporate Jets; employed his sporting heroes Jackie Stewart and Jack Nicklaus as £3 million-a-year Global Ambassadors; had fresh fruit flown in daily from Paris; obsessed over the colour of the bank’s carpets; and lavished $500 million on the RBS Connecticut HQ at the height of his powers. The author is not the first to suggest the man at the helm from 2000 to 2008 was an unapproachable megalomaniac, but at the heart of this book is a determination to uncover those conditions that allowed profligacy and recklessness to permeate a once-trusted and respected institution.

A whole chapter dedicated to RBS’s famous takeover battle with Bank of Scotland for Nat West in 1999/2000 is a welcome context to subsequent events, and Fraser is keen to remind us how Goodwin’s role in this would later become a Harvard Business School case study in successful integration. It also earned Goodwin the Forbes Global Businessman of the Year for 2002 and the admiration of New Labour and the Prince of Wales. So the Shred wasn’t born with a silver spoon and didn’t acquire an army of sycophants without demonstrating his Midas Touch during his early days. But it convinced him more acquisitions would keep the share-price rising, ending with the fateful decision to buy ABN Amro in 2007.

In total RBS made 27 acquisitions on his watch, most of them a vain attempt to take on Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup in their own backyard. By 2006 the bank’s American subsidiary, RBS Greenwich Capital, had become the second biggest issuer of sub-prime securities worth $99.3 billion (behind only Lehman Brothers). Fraser unearths quotes from Goodwin on 1st March and 5th June 2007 stating RBS did not get involved in sub-prime lending, even though he must have known by November that year just how much exposure the bank had to a weakening US housing market. Was this disingenuousness, denial or deception?

One of the obvious lessons from the crisis is that the regulatory authorities should have done more to prevent a bank like RBS getting out control. The bank’s adherence to the International Financial Reporting Standards (FRS) method of accounting helped it hide up to £32 billion of shaky assets, allowing poor-performing loans to go unreported. Likewise, the Clinton administration’s passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act – which banned the Securities and Exchange Commission from regulating derivatives – created the conditions for casino banking to flourish. The arch-capitalist Democratic President also loosened the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that had been in place to separate Retail and Investment banking. Even the most trusted central banker of modern times, Alan Greenspan, must rue his decision to lower interest rates from 6.5 percent to 1 percent in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

But RBS, despite its global pretensions, remained a Scottish bank to the core and reaped the benefits of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Big Bang’ in 1986. This remains one of the most ambitious bonfires of regulation in the history of modern capitalism and led to an orgy of mergers and acquisitions following the dismantling of exchange controls. Goodwin and RBS were one of many beneficiaries of the ‘light touch’ regulation continued by Blair and Brown in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Once again Fraser produces an impressive array of quotes from New Labour’s leaders praising the minimum supervisory role of the FSA. The bonanza of Corporation Tax produced by financial taxes represented 13.4 percent of the entire take in 2007 (£67.8 billion) – no wonder Gordon Brown claimed his Cabinet had abolished the boom and bust cycle.

In essence the tale of RBS is a depressing story of arrogance and myopia where institutional investors did nothing to hold the bank to account. As a listed company, RBS came to be dominated by a smaller pool of shareholders with ever larger stakes. The pressure to increase Returns on Equity, pay higher dividends and boost the share-price granted power to short-term over long-term interests. Goodwin feared his bank would be ‘in play’ as a takeover target if it did not go along with an aggressive expansion. As Fraser points out, an astonishing 94.5 percent of shareholders voted for the disastrous €71.1 billion acquisition of ABN Amro in August 2007 as part of a consortium with Santander and Fortis. Surely this now ranks as one of the most insane decisions taken by a listed company in the last four hundred years.

Shredded: Inside RBS has won prestigious accolades from Bloomberg, the Huffington Post and The Week, but Goodman Sachs must be relieved they no longer sponsor the FT Business Book of the Year, for which this made the longlist. Their scandalous handling of the RBS £12 billion rights issue in October 2008 leaves them with little integrity. Indeed, Fraser reveals how Goldman passed on shares it was under-writing to a group of hedge funds intent on short-selling RBS. Critics believe this outrageous disloyalty might even have contributed to the share price dropping below 200p. The mere chance it could have put the whole rights issue in jeopardy shows a breath-taking betrayal of trust from the world’s most famous investment bank and is one of many revelations Fraser uncovers in his monumental study. Former RBS Economist, Alex Salmond, is also quoted in a sycophantic letter to Goodwin praising the globe-trotting success of the bank and its importance to Scotland’s economic identity.

At 608 pages, Fraser has left us with a gripping account of the bank that nearly blew up the British economy. And eight years later RBS is still a noose around the taxpayer’s neck. A Moneywise survey in 2015 named it the least trusted bank in the UK due to its appalling customer service and complaint-handling. Numerous lawsuits remain outstanding from manipulation of LIBOR and rigging the foreign exchange markets to the scandalous behaviour of its Global Restructuring Group, where thousands of small businesses allege the bank pushed them into bankruptcy to buy up their assets on the cheap for future profit.

The sad truth is Britain would be better off without RBS, but its sheer size makes it too important to fail. Ian Fraser is in no mood to temper the moral outrage, but perhaps glosses over some of the bank’s early successes during the Millennium. In that regard Shredded: Inside RBS is the right book at the right time for our epoch and is guaranteed a long print run. Aside from the poor taste of the cover artwork and populist title, this is a serious piece of work aimed at both the aggrieved taxpayer and FT reader.

[Alistair · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book is rather melodramatic because RBS was only one of numerous banks worldwide that believed their own hype and bonuses to believe that they were kings of the financial universe and geniuses in a world that mere mortals could not understand . RBS was simply one of the worst examples of corporate greed and hubris.

Ass Warren Buffet the legendary investor has said " when the tide goes out you discover who has been swimming naked " . This book exposes in particular the names in RBS and the wider financial world of those who were skinny dipping .

If you don't know your Collateralised debt obligation from your credit default swap don't worry neither did most of the executives that ran the financial organisations that went bust in 2008 . All they knew was that they seemed to be making money and most importantly they were banking huge bonuses . Not surprisingly when it all went wrong the bankers , so called regulators , politicians , and the various leeches who had benefited until the crash , all simply disappeared to spend more time with their families and more time counting their money .

This book reads like a financial who dunnit and kept me turning the pages relentlessly as RBS run by a bullying CEO namely Fred Goodwin , having made one successful takeover of Natwest and then buoyed by his own PR believed that he was bullet proof and proceeded to over extend the bank until it all ran into the buffers and he had to go cap in hand to the government ...sorry the taxpayer in order to be bailed out . On the way up all the familiar warning signs were there such as huge glossy new headquarters , suites at the Ritz , Mercedes S black limousines , trips to Formula 1 , gung ho press briefings , mad takeovers , overpaid executives and so on . On the way down the guilty parties got off Scott free apart from one scapegoat an RBS executive who was thrown to the wolves although I don't think he is living on the benefit . What happened to the politicians Blair and Brown and regulators who joined the party and encouraged the financial hysteria . Was it their fault ? Of course not it was somebody else and they all moved on to other jobs or a secure pension funded retirement . Alistair Duncan the Chancellor at the time comes out of it pretty well but he is an exception .

Have the lessons been learned ? Of course not . Many committees and reports later and in time 6 years later nothing has really changed . Don't believe anyone who tells you that bankers and their associates are especially talented and need excessive pay . They are especially talented at making a quick buck ripping off naive investors and riding off into the sunset .

A sobering brilliantly detailed and well researched book .

[Vanya Prodanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Определено тази книга не е написана с идеята да я четат обикновените хора, тъй като е толкова натоварена и натежала от имена, дати, организации, акроними, термини и какво ли още не, че да бъде лесно смилаема и разбрана, е мисия невъзможна. Изисква се сериозно усилие да се премине през цялата информация при все, че авторът определено го бива да пише, но явно и той не е успял да намери начин как цялото това мазало наречено икономика и банково дело да бъде предадено леко.

Как да е. Депресирах се. Агресирах се. Отчаях се. От това, което мозъкът ми пое и успя да разплете - му прилоша. Четях и макар това да е книга за краха на Royal Bank of Scotland, виждах толкова много грешни неща, които са отвъд просто банковото дело, но и в обществото ни като цяло. Леле, вяра никому, тъжно, но истина. Проучваш си нещата и се молиш каквото си прочел и проучил да се окаже вярно и да не се прецакаш. Защото демократичният свят и свободният пазар си имат цена и обикновено такива като мен и други обикновени хора плащаме цената всеки божи ден и не можем нищо да направим, за да се спасим.

Ще има месеци наред да се депресирам и стресирам от прочетеното. :/

[Mark Fairey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to start with, but became repetitive. Some editing would have been helpful.

The author can find no one to say anything favorable about.

It does provide insight on huge governance failures and also that the fact that many analysts were aware of the risks about RBS's growth strategy.

[Ry Strummer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly interesting and informative read that provides a real in depth analysis of the fall of RSB. I found the history of how the bank became so huge particularly fascinating.

I’ve dropped a star for the book being too long. Better editing would have made this more concise and a smoother read.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will rightly make you furious that these people didn’t end up in jail

[Ev · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book delivered far more than I expected. A rich range of sources, good explanations of the implications of financial regulations and the naivety of regulators and politicians, particularly Brown and co. Perhaps Ian Fraser's proximity to the source, being a Scot, added some passion to his investigation.

I met some of the GBM people mentioned in 2011. They were not at all contrite and regarded the ABN Amro deal as Fred Goodwin's only major mistake. Easy to have that attitude when you've sailed into the sunset with your bonuses and wealth intact.

I also met some LaSalle people a few years before and recall how relieved (overjoyed!) they were that Bank of America acquired them and not RBS.

[Jaqui Lane · Rating 3 out of 5]

For an inside view of what and how RBS imploded, and to get more insight into why the GFC occurred get hold of this book.
Fraser also looks into the unprecedented orgy of speculation and debt that created the GFC and left banks and finance houses around the world stranded.
Interestingly though very few of the executives involved in this went to jail, most kept their bonuses and huge pay cheques and some are still in banking and finance.
It seems we've learnt nothing and while regulations and regulators have improved we are not really that much further along.

[Carole Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping tale of greed, narcissism and megalomania. A horror story of what happens where there is weak governance and lack of oversight. This is an absolutely shocking book - and begs the question - have we learned anything?

[John Coughlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterly exposition and examination. Illuminating, fascinating and frightening in equal measure.

[Iain Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent exposé of the banking/political crisis.

[Kahn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Earlier this month, Season 9 of Doctor Who (the Pertwee years) was released on BluRay, and among the plethora of extras you will find two omnibus editions of some classic Who fun.
The Sea Devils and Day Of The Daleks, as you ask.
What both of these little gems prove is how you can cut a chunk out of something and tell a tale in a short, punchy way with no loss of quality.
I mention this for two reasons.
First, watching the same story twice in quick succession was more entertaining than this book.
Secondly, Ian Fraser could do with learning that less is more.
Shredded is billed as the story of "the bank that broke Britain" (a phrase, we later learn, that was more important than the facts he was to come and present), it claims to "lift the lid" on the mistakes that took the Royal Bank of Scotland "to the brink of collapse" (which isn't the same as breaking a nation, but hey ho).
The focus of the book is, we are told, the terrible reign of Fred Goodwin and how his decisions did all the damage.
It helps to remember that name, because you will be more than half way through this tedious tome before Fred pops up.
Before that we get a detailed, almost forensic, history of the bank.
Do we need it to understand what happened? No.
Would this book have been a better read without it? Of course.
But then, as we find as we trudge on, details are what put the spring in Mr Fraser's step.
Want to know the exact square footage of key office buildings? You're in luck. Keen to know the results of the F1 races and golf tournaments Fred attended? This is the book for you. Won't sleep until you know the exact address - and in some cases, decorative details and surrounding vistas - of where the meetings were held? Do we have the book for you...
Buried in this somnambulistic swamp is the story of what happened. It's about 200 pages long and involves Goodwin getting lucky with the NatWest merger and setting off around the banking world with only world domination on his mind - only for the balloon to go up in 2008 and the entire industry to collapse in on itself.
You may have heard about that bit. There are quite a few books on the matter. Fraser quotes two of them (Fool's Gold and The Big Short) which is a brave move as in two short paragraphs he illustrates what good business writing is and how his isn't it.
And that, in a nutshell, is the key problem with this book. He's trying to give us an inside scoop on a very public matter. The financial crash was played out in headlines and news bulletins around the world. There were public inquiries, there were investigations, there were reports. All of them will give you what you are looking for in half the time.
And any sweary outbursts will be aimed at those who screwed us all over, not one business writer who has never listened to his sub editors.
Because, and I will stop banging on shortly - but I can't begin to tell you how angry this book has made me, an important thing to remember here is Fraser is a journalist. A writer. He should know what makes a good story.
He should also know what makes a bad story.
He should also, definitely, know that you don't casually reveal the location of a former convict who has done his time, been released and is now trying to get on with his life.
But hey, we are where we are.
One final thing.
Twice, Fraser brings up the claim that Goodwin was having an affair during the final days as the bank started to burn. First time, he tells us he can't say who with for legal reasons. Second time he gives us more details before reminding us that he can't tell us who it was for legal reasons.
Now, if I'd been issued with a gagging order, and it didn't really make any difference to the narrative or the events that unfolded, I'd probably stop acting like a petulant child and not mention it.
It could have been edited out with more than half of this piffle and we'd all have had a better experience.
One final, final thing (no, honestly, I need a cup of tea).
If you are going to actually claim that this is THE bank that broke Britain, if you are going to structure your entire narrative around the fact that this one institution that led us down the financial cul-de-sac, maybe don't have an entire chapter dedicated to naming all the other banks that were also at fault and imploded eh?

[Alex Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian Fraser's "Shredded" is an exhaustive account of the history of RBS since the late 90s. Starting with George Mathewson's original centralisation and modernisation of the bank, moving to the worst excesses of the Fred Goodwin days before the recovery under Stephen Hester and then Ross McEwan, Fraser provides valuable context, sourced from extensive interviews, into the inner machinations of the beast the bank became.

Indeed, Fraser's account of the runup to the crisis is a useful addition to the genre and goes into excruciating detail about the culture of fear Goodwin created, Goodwin's arrogance coupled with an astonishing lack of knowledge about his own bank's risk appetite. As good as this section is, however, this reader found that Fraser reduces its power by apportioning too much of the blame to lax regulatory oversight on both sides of the pond. Whilst this did provide the necessary backdrop for RBS to overextend beyond belief, there was no gun to Fred's head forcing him to do these deals.

The book is also perhaps overly harsh on Goodwin's successors, noting that while Hester achieved a lot with the balance sheet reduction, he failed to enact wholesale cultural change, a not uncommon view, but one that is perhaps unfair. Changing an entirely sales-driven culture that had zero thought for customer fairness whilst also drastically reshaping the bank in 5 years is nigh impossible.

Despite some lack of balance in his assessment, the book is still a must-read, if only for the natural cynicism it will foist upon any student of Annual Reports. Fraser systematically shows how duplicitous Goodwin and McKillop were to investors, including a particularly powerful section detailing the rights issue in 2008. It will sear the importance of healthy scepticism onto your brain.

[Thekirkiepirate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where to begin with the RBS debacle?

This book provides a fascinating insight not just to the collapse of the bank - and almost western capitalist economy's - but also the history and context of the shambles. At times I felt that too much attention went into the complex mortgage products that played such a critical role, but some information on them was necessary to fully understand the greed and unethical behaviours that contributed to the collapse. It was also interesting to read of the ingratitude of Goodwin and McKillop about the government rescue package and how little in the years immediately following that the bank learned from the crisis.

Having had the misfortune to encounter Goodwin in his years at Clydesdale I found that most of what seemed like outlandish stories about him were, in fact, true. He is a truly disturbed and unpleasant individual, but we can rest assured in the comfort that his being badged 'the world's worst banker' will vex him far more than losing his knighthood. It must also be said that McKillop does not fare much better.

As I read the book, I often recalled seeing the RBS directors at their AGM before the crash, sitting at the top table clad in the uniforms prescribed by Goodwin, smirking at the obscene levels of profit being declared. At the time I thought that they had no idea where there profits emanated, and this book has proved me right.

The fact that someone as litigious as Freddy has made no legal challenge to this book is testament to its accuracy and honesty.

[Writemoves · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I was not a former banker, I doubt that I would've been interested in reading a book of over 900 pages about a failed bank. Much of the stupidity, greed, and very poor judgment that was described in this book also occurred in very many large banks, including those in the United States. I'm not sure why when someone achieves a title of CEO or corporate president, they automatically receive some aura of invincibility and infallibility.

There are so many cautionary tales about greed and corruption in today's business world. At RBS, the only people who were doing well were at the high executive level and board members. I was amused at some of Fred Goodwin's opulence. Based on the book, Goodwin was a man of mediocre talents and poor judgment but had a high taste for the finer things in life, including cars, jets, wine and mansions.

The author details, how poorly the bank treated its customers – – to the point of abuse. And all of this was done under the direction of its executive management to justify their exorbitant salaries and benefits. Bad decisions made by the management of this bank adversely affected the financial and economic health of its customers and even its investors.

The book is highly researched maybe to the point of "too much information." Even though this was about a bank in Scotland, it easily could've been a story about a United States bank, particularly during the decade of 2001–2010.

[Steve Aldridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book but have your blood pressure medication handy. If this book had been a script for a film, it would have been rejected as being ludicrous but here it is, meticulously researched. The story of a bank and its rogue management who collapsed the UK economy. Yet despite this, hardly any retribution has been made.

Don't think that because these events happened some years ago that this story is no longer relevant because you would be seriously mistaken. The world of banking emerged generally untouched despite the chaos with many of the same people and attitudes lying there, ready to make the same mistakes.

It became a common myth to blame the crash on public debt which is utter nonsense. The explosion of private debt, created out of thin air (yes, the magic money tree does indeed exist), caused this. The blame for the crash as far as governments are concerned lies with politicians, New Labour especially as well as Tories and LibDems, who treated bankers as untouchable super-heroes, applauding their behaviour like star struck groupies.

Unless you understand the message of this story, you'll be forever bamboozled by politicians, financiers and the media.

[Monzenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for company failures. Bank failures are an even stronger catnip for me, being in the same industry. The narrative of what made RBS rise and fall is quite strong, and a lot of blame was available. Personally I wasn't so much of a fan of the "ultimate villain" (blame is different from ultimate blame, methinks, and I'm a believer of the ability to break away from incentives). Still the narrative was quite nice.

[M Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tremendous feat of journalism, Fraser seemingly had access to everyone associated with this debacle. Unfortunately, if he had access to a competent editor, he ran in the other direction. The book is perhaps a third longer than it needs to be and Fraser feels compelled to include everything snarky anyone said, even if (only occasionally) it was quite obtuse.

[tom woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

Great book very insightful, very much opinion of author but a well researched book. Lots of questions to think about

[Mbachi Thindwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great account on the behind the scenes action on RBS before and after the financial crisis. Incredibly thrilling as well.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shredded is thoroughly reported and at parts feels a bit overly so; most of the book is basically a sustained critique of banks, bankers, banking regulators, Basel banking regulations, politicians, etc. It is not especially balanced, having said that, the reporting is quite solid and unearths a lot of behind the scenes detail as to how Fred Goodwin ran RBS (to the ground). Though there is a lot more color, conceptually there is not that much new - the same villains are there: megalomanic CEO, weak board, ineffective and indecisive regulators, loose monetary policy, bull market sentiment, perverse incentives, etc, etc. What does seem unique to RBS (besides scale) is perhaps its having gotten one big acquisition right (NatWest), making the managers over-confident about subsequent ones. Chapter 33 was to me the most interesting - In C33 the focus is on SME customers who saw their livelihoods and life's work destroyed by RBS bankers who would arbitrarily call loans or revalue collateral, forcing an otherwise surviving business into default, in order to seize the collateral at fire prices and sell it for profits. This sort of thing was sustained and arguably even more encouraged under Hester (above whose tenure I had not known much before) as RBS was then loss-making and needing to clean up its books - the lesson is that even as a bank is shrinking, it can do so in anti-social and cynical ways. I had not understood this side of it before.

[Sukhy Chohan · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Rob UK citizens and get away with it!

Why aren't they all in jail serving long sentences? So much for David Cameron making all the noises how bankers will be dealt with.?? What have you done Mr Cameron - nothing!! I am shocked and horrified by the grotesque attitudes of those supposedly responsible of lax attitudes towards risk. If Goodwin was a tyrant to the extent mentioned then those that should have challenged him are just as complicit. Politicians. Investors and shareholders you are all guilty.
It's ok when the money's rolling in nothing matters, everyone is great. But, when the shoe is on the other foot funny how they have all blended in to the background , leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces. Conveniently, tax payers money saves the day never to be seen again. Goodwin and his cronies are biggest scoundrels going who have got away with daylight robbery, sending out the wrong messages to everyone in the financial industry.
Hester the jester is no better, deals behind closed doors that on the face seem good but again abuse the very people that saved the bank.
Why does this country reward failure? Because, we got no balls to stand up to and deal with those that really need bringing to book for fear of not attracting the right people!!! Utter rubbish.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is good but not that good. For all the thorough research and the impressive excoriation of Goodwin it has surprisingly little original analysis. It's pretty forthright but not passionate enough, losing it's impact in the wash of detail. It comes to certain half hearted conclusions, which seem to suggest that it was everybody's fault so no one is too culpable. If this is the best we can do as a polemic on a fundamentally dysfunctional financial system then we are in trouble.

[Jane Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is far more detail in this book than most of us can understand, let alone absorb. But the story is clear, and fills in the gaps in what we learned from the news as time went by. And it's not encouraging.
My main annoyance is with the lack of proof-reading. I know it's normal now, but it makes it hard to read when one is constantly interrupted by mistakes.

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't so much a book as a data dump. I'm not sure any editors were involved in the making of this project, which appears to be a collected set of journalistic notes about RBS, haphazardly divided into chapters with a massive amount of repetition.

As for the contents? It's worth reading if you're interested in global banking - otherwise you an skip this.

[Jan Bos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good write-up on the delusions of Fred Goodwin, the board, regulators, politicians, investors, etc.