The FT has noted:
The spotlight directed on Thursday at UK Financial Investments went down badly in the Treasury. The attention sparked by the resignation of Jim O'Neil, UKFI chief executive, provided an unwelcome reminder of the UK's tardiness in returning to private sector hands the banks it bailed out at the height of the 2008 financial crisis.
For the record, UKFI owns the government's stakes in RBS, Lloyds and other failed banks.
And as usual the FT and Treasury have got this issue wrong. UKFI was set up with the aim of pretending these assets were not state owned, to keep politics out of their management and with the intention of selling them off again.
It's, quite extraordinarily, run by a bunch of bankers.
And all that's just wrong. UKFI should exist to actively manage these assets on behalf of the state for social purposes and to deliver long term gain to all who bailed them out - that's you.
That was a mistake by labour but they could, just, be forgiven for thinking the crisis may not last long. Now we know it has many years still to run. So the time for active engagement has come. And UKFI needs a serious re-vamp to achieve that.
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Who would you people the UKFI with?
Civil servants
An employee rep – at least one
A banker
An academic or two
Civil society
A business representative
With a clear political direction being given to them all
Plus some people who have insight – I think Polly Toynbee once suggested Will Hutton, Larry Elliott, and I hate to say it, me
UKFI just need to be reiminded of some sage advice from the 18th century:-
“Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from these rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.”
As an aside and in defence of the Co operatve Bank, perhaps Peter Marks was unconsciously if not consciously following this advice, when deciding to pull out of “Project Verde”?
theremustbeanotherway – would I be right in thinking your quote is from Adam Smith? If it is, could you point out to the Adam Smith Institute what their hero really thought about banking?
Actually, even if I’m wrong, it mught be worth pointing this out to the right wing idiots whose ideology produced the financial crash.
It is indeed Adam Smith, but of course the clowns who run the Institute named after him seem to base their outpourings on an abridged version of the Wealth of Nations. Surprise, surprise, they also have a massive blind spot regarding his “Theory of Moral Sentiments”.