MSE News: Ex-Northern Rock directors misled over mortgage arrears stats

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"Two former senior employees have been fined and banned after understating the number of customers behind on payments ..."

Read the full story:
Ex-Northern Rock directors misled over mortgage arrears stats

drsteve

Erm and the jail sentence? Honestly this country is taking the !!!!. Directors have a legal obligation to the City. Diliberately misreporting information should carry a hefty jail sentence. Fines are nothing to banking execs a mere slap on the wrist. I'm also interested to know who gets the money when companies and directors are fined. The government? Oh how very convenient! We're all meant to feel better because a company or a bunch or crooked execs have been fined. Nobody seems to care where the money goes. Between MPs expenses and the whole banking fiasco we're all being taken for mugs.

VIGILANT22

I would like to know where Adam Applegarth (CEO) figured in all of this?
These fines will just help the guys at Canary Wharf bump up their bonus's.

renford

A £0.5m fine, levied against an individual, is good going in my book, regardless of where the money goes (sorry drsteve).

Is the FSA finally growing some cojones?

That said, I read elsewhere that David Baker said of the fine, "I made an error of judgment and I regret it." If it were up to me, I'd fine him another £0.5m per year until he says, "I told a blatant lie because I thought the FSA would let me get away with it."

Am I too harsh?

poppy10_2

Shouldn't this have been a criminal investigation into outright fraud, rather than just a slap on the wrist from the FSA?

VIGILANT22

If the FSA had been doing their job properly, they would have identified this....hence the reason it is dealt with "internal"

Pincher

VIGILANT22 wrote: »

If the FSA had been doing their job properly, they would have identified this....hence the reason it is dealt with "internal"

The whole business with appointing your own auditor, like Del Boy hiring Arthur Dailey (Anderson) to audit his books, is a farce. Why don't I just find my own corrupt driving test examiner, slip him a twenty, and skip the formalities.

I had a conversation with an ACA qualified auditor, and it's a joke.
There is no way you can go through everything,
so you take some samples of the books. The junior auditors do all the work, and then the senior partners tell them to throw away the dodgy ones, if the client pays really well. In the end, the auditor is only expressing an "opinion", NOT a guarantee that the accounts bear a true and fair reflection of the company. The senior partner signing the accounts just pleads ignorance, that the junior auditor actually did the work, so he can only be done for poor supervision.

The small self-employed people have no such fat fees to extract, so the auditors actually look at the books, and "see" the violations they were blind to in the million pound fee audits.

I think some sort government run department of integrated tax inspector/auditor that combine Revenue and FSA functions should be set up. This will lend the man power of the HMRC to the FSA, who will at last have a fighting chance.

In terms of funding, if I have to pay for my car to pass the MOT once a year, I think a company should pay the FSA for an audit MOT. The cost is probably proprortional to capitalisation.

What we actually need is to embed HMRC/FSA compliance software inside ALL MIS (Management Information System, aka BIS). Any suspicious transactions can be automatically logged. Things like reserve ratios can be calculated daily, AUTOMATICALLY. Actually, you can probably do it every minute, but that would silly. I'm sure it's a warning a properly run bank wants to know, that it is close to the limit.

VIGILANT22

Pincher

and the job of the 2 below ...was what??


Clive Briault Head of Retail David Strachan Supervising large retail firms

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3517067.ece

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3586950.ece

Pincher

VIGILANT22 wrote: »

Pincher

and the job of the 2 below ...was what??


Clive Briault Head of Retail David Strachan Supervising large retail firms

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3517067.ece

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3586950.ece

That's why we need an army of bitter twisted power hungry administrators who hate bankers.

What I mean is no more Coopers, Erst & Young, etc. ALL audits must be done by fixed fee boring bureaucrats, just like a driving test. There seems to be three loads of external people looking at these accounts and financial manoeuvrings: appointed external auditor, HMRC tax inspectors, and FSA compliance officers. Isn't there some kind of synergy to be had here?

What we want is an army of bureaucrats who will be sacked for taking a bribe, and reprimanded for failing to spot violations. Recruit bookwarms that bankers don't want to invite as friends, because they are too ugly and have no social skills, so they have no chance of getting a banking job in the private sector. We want them to hold a grudge against the rich champagne swilling bankers, and will nail any transgresser with relish. Hopefully, £30k~£50k plus a civil service pension will attract suitable Hitler wannabes.

VIGILANT22

Pincher wrote: »

That's why we need an army of bitter twisted power hungry administrators who hate bankers. QUOTE]

All you have to do is vote Tory.......you will keep many people (not FSA)....in Financial Services happy..........the independent's anyhow

Pincher

VIGILANT22 wrote: »

Pincher wrote: »

That's why we need an army of bitter twisted power hungry administrators who hate bankers. QUOTE]

All you have to do is vote Tory.......you will keep many people (not FSA)....in Financial Services happy..........the independent's anyhow

Do you mean the FSA are full of ex-bankers who are pally with the fat cats? And the FSA come down hard on smaller independents who are not in the club? Well, break up this cosy little club, let the lesbian single mothers in.

If the existing auditing fees are able to keep the UK population of auditors in clover, it will certainly pay for a DVLA sized organisation. It might even reduce the auditing fees for the smaller independents. If an Ernst & Young junior auditor can be billed for £250 or more per hour, I think we can hire quite few £50k a year inspectors for that.

I thought Gordon Brown wants more financial regulation, and David Cameron wants less?