So I see that nearly 5 years after the event a Banking Standards Commission report recommends that certain top bankers get a life ban from working in the city. Well both my father and my grandfather worked in the city and if a trader or broker was perceived to have been naughty or totally incompetant then they got a severe reprimand or at worst life banishment so it seems fair enough to me. There were of course always a few at the top of the tree who “got away with it” as there always are. . . . .
. . . . . and talking of which, some schadenfreude should be reserved for that magnificently unfit for purpose institution known as the FSA (Fairly Sleepy Authority) which frankly spent more time worrying about whether some small-time money raiser should have to spend pointless hours and funds becoming FSA registered when they should have been looking at certain banks which were tearing up their risk profiles and sticking them in the bin along with any semblance of corporate governance.
What a bunch of muppets (with apologies to Kermit the Frog and his friends who incidentally would have done a far better job in overseeing the financial system than the FSA ever did). What strange substances were they imbibing down at Hector’s House at the time because as an insomniac I could do with some AND why hasn’t Hector himself (Hector Sants and chief Muppet) suffered serious censure like beheading or life imprisonment in the Tower or even a knighthood in the New Year’s honours list. Again it is a common theme that I return to almost weekly: one rule for the establishment and their lackeys, completely different rule for the rest of society and talking of lackeys, the establishment and the puerile legislation that they produce let us return to TUPE . . . . .
As I explained TUPE was clumsily drafted which means that if any business is bought out of receivership then the purchaser is “legally” obliged to take on ALL the staff and their accrued benefits. . . . . result: too much risk no deal. The only exception to this is where a business goes into liquidation BUT if this happens there is nothing to buy, as goodwill will have been totally destroyed. The best way therefore for the buyer to reduce the risk is to allow a certain amount of time before buying a business out of administration, particularly if the target is being bought via a pre-pack. Timing must be judged finely, too short a time and the risk of getting bitten by TUPE becomes too high, too long a time and goodwill disappears particularly with trading businesses (e.g. distribution). And in case there are any members of the expense fiddling and speeding ticket dodging liberal left reading this then the idea is not to destroy workers’ rights but to preserve some of their jobs, a fact that seems to have been missed entirely by the legislators.
Sayanara
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