£15 million here, £390 million there. Pretty soon you’re talking serious money. Billions, actually

Another Royal Bank of Scotland classic. And who will pay? Anyone at the bank? What’s your best guess?

We all remember fondly the man who got this bank into a mess – the deeply unpleasant sociopath Fred Goodwin, now happily playing golf while we wonder why a) he has a pension and b) he isn‘t in jail.

And let us shed a tear for Ross McEwan, the New Zealander chief executive  who volunteered to clear the mess up. I wonder how many more nasty surprises are coming his way

The bank is going to be fined about £15m for giving dodgy mortgage advice to customers, having already been fined £390m for its part in the LIBO rate fixing scam.

The bank lost £8.2bn last year and has set aside £3.2bn to compensate customers mis-sold loans.

The money has to come from somewhere. But we don’t have to wonder where. RBS is 81% owned by us, the taxpayers. So we will be coughing up. Assisted, of course, by the customers. Who are also tax-payers.

And once again we wonder who will be punished for all this criminal activity.

It seems that in this country the only people who never get what should be coming to them are them. The people in charge.

In the quite different, infinitely nastier case it seems nobody is responsible for the 1,400 abused children in Rotherham. The police boss who presided over the mess – in which the police were clearly culpable – doesn’t think he should resign.

Why?

 

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

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