Well, well - nothing to do with the global banking crisis just a bunch of idiots making a series of very poor decisions.

More like they were the ones caught without a chair to sit down on when the music stopped.

Exactly the sort of behaviour that caused the global financial crisis.

In their case, though, there's just the vague possibility that they will have to pay some sort of price for their behaviour.





Mind, thinking of something else: 'HBOS – vile product of mega wage sector' ...

Even at the stretchiest stretch to say "nothing" is, well, stretching it. Maybe not the cause, but one of the cards that was pulled out of the house later on, to leave Gordon Brown and the Labour Party causing the crisis...

More proof were it needed that investment banking in particular is built on guesswork, educated to some degree or another but guesswork all the same.

Given that Nick Leeson and Kweku Adoboli both did time for what were genuine deals that went badly wrong, can we expect to see any of HBOS's former directors in the dock any time soon?

It's about as likely as those at HSBC who knowingly looked the other way while drug and terror money was being laundered through their US subsidiary ever being brought to account. Yes Lord Green, you know who I'm talking about...

Brown and his cronies hailed the Lloyds bail out as a great success. I said at the time it would be a disaster and weaken Lloyds. Of course, it did and Lloyds had to be bailed out by the taxpayer.

It was a success. It stopped a major bank going under, stopped a run on banks in general and saved even further devastation to the economy.

No, it took down a very large bank. The government could have stepped in to save HBoS without encouraging Lloyds to go down with the ship.

It only weakened, not "took down", a very large bank that was itself in grave danger of going tits up. The price of a guarantee of government support was they take on HBoS. Lloyds TSB blinked first.

I doubt the directors of HBoS will ever be tried in any criminal court, simply because I doubt they broke any laws.

What I do believe should come from the ashes of the banking crisis is a register of bankers and finance "experts". Then if they are found to have fooked up in future, they should have their licence revoked and never be able to operate in financial services again.

Other professions, many of them remunerated far less than bankers, must join a professional body and swear to uphold certain standards. A surgeon would be struck off if found to operate in a reckless manner. At worst, a surgeon could only ruin one life at a time. Bankers have the capability to ruin whole economies.

Very different - RBoS went bust because of two things: casino banking/gambling on derivatives which turned out to be worthless and paying way too much for a ABN Amro.

HBOS went bust because of complete incompetence at the top which resulted in lending billions of pounds high risk poor quality loans.

The global crisis was mainly caused by the investment arms of banks holding worthless derivatives that they had borrowed heavily against - once it became obvious they were worthless they could not borrow anymore and as such they would have defaulted on their older loans.

HBOS was not in that position.

'Nothing to do with the global BANKing crisis' even though they were in charge of a BANK!
Are you on drugs?

You do know that both situations led to the perfect storm that was the banking crisis right?

HBOS were at the sharp end of the crisis - reckless lending, which at the end of the day was the whole cause of the crisis.