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Home > Blogs > Author > Ian Fraser

Ian Fraser

Ian Fraser
Ian Fraser, a journalist since 1988, is working on programmes about the banking and financial crisis for the BBC. He writes about business and finance for the Financial Times, the Sunday Times, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Mail, and the Mail on Sunday. He is a visiting lecturer in financial journalism at the University of Stirling (since October 2009). Previous roles include business editor of the Sunday Times Scotland, financial editor of the Sunday Herald, deputy editor of Director, assistant editor of EuroBusiness and editor of internal publications at Unilever. He previously worked in the advertising industry in Edinburgh, London, and Paris. Ian graduated MA honours in English from the University of St Andrews.

Recent blog posts

  • UK’s uncertain outlook clouds stockpicking picture
    The man who took over the reins at Fidelity International’s Special Situations Fund from the legendary investment manager Anthony Bolton has been outlining his investment vision. Sanjeev Shah said that his preference is for companies capable of “generating solid underlying organic growth”—largely because of his suspicion that UK economic growth will remain muted for some time. Even though the UK recession officially ended in…
  • Greek tragedy’s happy ending—A European Monetary Fund?
    The Greek crisis has brought the structural flaws in European Monetary Union (EMU) into sharp relief, as well as weakening the euro and the credibility of the euro. But out of the furnace of the sovereign debt crisis an eminently sensible proposal has emerged. Instead of unseemly internal bickering over the extent to which richer eurozone states should dig into their pockets to bail out fiscally irresponsible partners, plans are being drawn up for a new institution that should help…
  • Beijing unlikely to go MAD any time soon
    Americans (some Americans anyway) remain deeply anxious about China’s ownership of $1–2 trillion of their country’s debt. The fears that these massive holdings leave the US vulnerable and expose intensified on February 15 when it was reported Beijing had dumped some $34.2 billion of US Treasury bills. There are fears, for example, that Beijing might suddenly offload its circa $1.5 trillion holding of Treasury bills and, in so doing, spark an economic version of mutually assured destruction…
  • Buffett advocates more stick, less carrot to ensure bank bosses shape up
    Legendary Omaha-based investor Warren Buffett often uses his annual letter to shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway group to impart some homespun financial wisdom and disseminate a few trade secrets. The letter accompanying the conglomerate’s 2009 annual report, released on Saturday, doesn’t disappoint. Perhaps Buffett’s most pertinent recommendation, concerns the corporate governance of large financial institutions. Buffett, 79, strongly believes that…
  • The wider consequences of Greece’s tragedy
    It’s time that institutional investors woke up to the wider repercussions of the Greek tragedy and rethought their attitudes to risk as well as their approaches to asset allocation. Obviously investors are aware of the way in which the credit crisis has accelerated the shift in the balance of economic power from the developed and towards the emerging world, a shift that has obviously been influenced by the fiscal irresponsibility of the former…
  • Tobin makeover not quite what it seems
    The campaign for a “Tobin” tax on global financial transactions, first proposed by the Nobel prize-winning economist James Tobin in 1971, has gained a new lease of life. The idea was given fresh impetus by “Red” Adair Turner, chairman of UK regulator the FSA last summer. Yet, despite the public’s dislike of bankers, the proposal never really caught the public’s imagination. This probably had little to do with dire warnings issued by the City of London and London Mayor Boris Johnson that the…
  • IPO window slams shuts in “howling gale of fear”
    The flotations window that has been opened up since the bear market rally kicked in last March has been slammed shut as risk aversion stalks global financial markets. Institutional investors are concerned about the ending of quantitative easing and the uncertainties that have been caused by the sovereign debt crisis in the EU. Both have sparked stock market volatility and rendered the near-term outlook for some corporates somewhat cloudy. The apparent closure of…
  • Volcker’s right: Prop trading was at heart of crisis
    There are plenty of powerful voices on Wall Street and in Congress out to rubbish President Obama’s ‘Volcker Rule’ right now. Their main gripes are that it won’t really work in practice (since it doesn’t apply to many banks and that others will find ways around the proposed rule), and that the rule will undermine the competitiveness of US banks and diminish their ability to lend to the real economy...
  • G20 reform agenda knocked sideways by Obama
    Despite the worthy talk at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, the world is even further from reaching unanimity about how best to re-regulate banks and financial institutions than at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last September...
  • Turner turns fire on bean counters
    Lord Turner, chairman of the UK's top financial regulator, angered people in the City of London when he told them last August that much of what they do is “socially useless” and that governments had been wrong to allow the financial sector to pursue untrammeled growth for so long. In a recent speech to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales (ICAEW) he went one step further and attacked the bean counters—and specifically standard setters such as…
  • HSBC goes with the economic flow
    If you need tangible evidence that economic power is ebbing away from Western financial centers such as London towards more dynamic economies in Asia, then look no further than HSBC’s decision to move its head office from London to Hong Kong. Ahead of next week’s historic move, which reverses the bank’s 1992 move from Hong Kong to London (a UK government requirement without which the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank would not have been allowed to…
  • Stiglitz lambasts Obama over handling of crisis
    He may be something of a pariah on Wall Street thanks to his calls for a new tax on “upper income” Americans but, in his latest critique of the Obama administration’s handling of the financial crisis, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz makes a great deal of sense. Stiglitz—described as “perhaps the closest thing we have to John Maynard Keynes in both his theoretical outlook and his cogent kibitzing of policymakers” by…
  • How to boost investment returns: Invest responsibly
    It’s official. Caring for the environment and for society can actually benefit your wealth. And according to a raft of recent surveys, the benefits of investing responsibly are increasingly being recognized by the global fund management industry, puncturing expectations that the financial crisis might put paid to such hopes. The only real negative to emerge from the recent surveys—and unfortunately it’s a big negative—is that…
  • Bernanke’s land grab falls flat
    There’s an interesting tussle going on in the US over whether the Federal Reserve should be given more powers—or indeed whether the Washington-based central bank should have its wings clipped. Those arguing in favor of the Fed gaining additional abilities perhaps unsurprisingly include its chairman “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke. He has recently been claiming—to the wry amusement of some economic commentators and guffaws from others…
  • Pondering recovery amid the snow
    The picturesque Swiss ski resort of Davos will later this month again play host to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the annual jamboree of the global great and the good. This year the event is likely to be dominated by soul-searching about the state of the global economic recovery. Specifically, speakers will be assessing whether the neo-Keynesian medicine doled out by most governments is going to be sufficient to…
  • Tobin becomes fashionable
    It was recently suggested that the US economist James Tobin renounced his commitment to a globally implemented tax on financial transactions just a few months before he died in March 2002. Tobin first proposed the idea, which he believed would curb speculation on foreign exchange markets, in 1971. In the wake of the recent financial crisis, the proposal has been gaining some traction in the…
  • Asian economic miracle version 2.0
    The flow of economic power from West to East has been massively accelerated by last year’s banking and financial crisis; indeed if investment managers’ predictions for 2010 are to be believed the process has become unstoppable. Many of the world’s leading investment management firms are predicting, in their outlooks for 2010, that the emerging economies of Asia-Pacific, and to a lesser extent Latin America, will outperform…
  • Roller-coaster ride for Chinese equities
    With economic recoveries and stock market rallies in the developed world looking shaky, investors are increasingly turning their eyes eastwards to benefit from the continuing economic boom in China. The latest to take the plunge is Anthony Bolton, the highly regarded British investor, currently president of investments at Fidelity. So enthused is Bolton, 59, by the opportunities in China…
  • Propping up failures only prolongs recession
    Are governments too eager to sustain banks that would otherwise have gone bust and are they too keen to lend a hand to the casualties of recession, such as US car manufacturers? And in doing so, are they at risk of inflating asset price bubbles that could turn out to be every bit as dangerous as that which burst so spectacularly in 2008? The way in which readers respond to this question will…
  • No-one can afford “too big to fail” banks
    The thorny issue of what to do about institutions that are “too big to fail” has been addressed by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England. In evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, King said it is impossible to construct a credible regulatory system while dinosaurs that are “too big to fail” are still allowed roam the financial jungle. By “too big to fail” King means…
  • Asia’s unprecedented opportunity
    Asia has a critical role to play in pulling the global economy out of recession and towards a more sustainable future, according to Dominique Strauss Kahn, the French-born managing director of the International Monetary Fund. But delivering the Monetary Authority of Singapore lecture on Friday, November 13th, he stressed…
  • Back to the future
    Morality and business ethics were on the agenda at the closing session of the QFINANCE debates on the future of finance held in Doha this week. Following a lively debate, delegates at the CNBC debate on the future of finance (“Same rules, same game”) voted on four possible outcomes of the banking and financial crisis. Each proposition was advanced by a finance practitioner, advisor, or scholar. In the end, the winning proposition at the debate…
  • Don’t count chickens on recovery
    There is a danger that central bankers including Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank and Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates too low and for too long—just as their predecessors did after the terror attacks on the United States in September 2001. Speaking at the launch event of QFINANCE in Doha on Wednesday, Rajar Kumar Gupta, senior partner emeritus at management consultants McKinsey & Co, warned…
  • Mark-to-market a cure, not a cause, of crisis
    It is wrong to blame fair-value accounting, also known as mark-to-market accounting, for causing the financial crisis that last year nearly tipped the global economy over the edge, according to the chairman of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Gerald Corrigan. Also a managing director of Goldman Sachs, Corrigan said: “I do not believe that fair value accounting was the cause of it.” In his role as co-chair of Goldman Sachs’s firm-wide risk management committee in the run up to the crisis…
  • New dawn for Gulf finance
    A new era has dawned for financial services, in which Gulf financial centers are well placed to demonstrate their virtues and fully compete with Western centers, according to Abdulrahman Ahmed Al-Shaibi, non-executive director of the Qatar Financial Center Authority. Addressing the QFINANCE launch event in Doha (“FT Rethinking the Future of Finance” conference), Mr Al-Shaibi said the time has come for…
  • Sovereign funds chastened
    Transparency has turned out to be something of a doubled-edged sword for the world’s $3 trillion sovereign wealth sector. Analysts suggest that sovereign wealth funds, which last year decided to embrace transparency, are now paying the price for being open and honest about their investment performance. Vociferous public disapproval of the losses they have incurred by investing in Western banks just as the credit crisis started to unfold is forcing them to…
  • Challenges on talent front
    Gulf nations will have to become less rigidly hierarchical if they are going to boost entrepreneurialism and attract and retain overseas talent, according to speakers at the Doha Business Roundtable. Linda Hill, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, one of the speakers at the Economist-organized event, said that if expatriate workers are denied the chance to get to the upper echelons of indigenous businesses...
  • Doha revisited
    Protectionism has become the “crack cocaine” of modern politics and anti-globalization forces have been emboldened by the global downturn, according to Mike Moore, the former prime minister of New Zealand. Speaking at the opening of the Doha Business Roundtable, “Gulf 2020: Scenario planning in a post crisis-economy,” in Qatar, Moore highlighted a recent report from the WTO which exposed...

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