Send him to the gallows! SBM’s verdict on Fred “the shred(k)?! Goodwin

The one & only hunt’n, shoot’n and fish’n Fred Goodwin!

Reports out that the odious individual that is Fred Goodwin is to be hauled through the courts by the RBS Shareholders Action Group for allegedly lying about the health of the bank at the time of the Rights issue in 2007 are welcome by SBM. As editor, I was integrally involved in the Bradford & Bingley Shareholders Action and saw intimately what damage the then manglement of these banks did to many shareholders. A number of elderly and relatively poor individuals had their small savings effectively wiped out.

IF Goodwin and his sidekicks – Tom McKillop (note no Sir in our reference) and Jonny Cameron knew about the true state of the bank ad concealed this to save their own skin when it launched the £12bn rights issue then, in my book, they are as guilty as the common fraudster. A convicted fraudster gets sent to jail so why not these three?

To even contemplate paying their legal fees is yet another finger in the eye to British taxpayers. Goodwin has earnt handsomely out of the carnage he created. Stripping him of his knighthood is merely symbolic. He should be made (and Killip and Cameron) to pay for his own defence and if he loses then be utterly stripped of his assets. I am not alone in these thoughts too with even Labour MP John Mann, who sits on the Commons Treasury Committee, describing the situation as ‘extraordinary’, saying: ‘It shows that the banks really don’t get it.’

An “oblivious” Mr Fox – fiddling while Rome burnt..?!

If it was up to me, the HMV shareholders should also be mounting a legal action against Simon Fox for his complete and utter mismanagement of the now collapsed retailers affairs during his tenure and be asking for his gross remuneration during his time there back. Stories this weekend that he is sitting on £2m of gains on his stock at Trinity Mirror had me spitting blood over my cornflakes. The Non exec’s who appointed him should hang there heads in utter, utter shame.