Outlook Jérôme Kerviel must be choking on his croissants this morning. While he's facing a lengthy jail term for his rogue trading at SocGen, the boys who nearly bust UBS, once the pride of Switzerland's financial services industry, are getting off scot-free.

Does the punishment fit the crime? When US hedge fundmanager Paul Greenwood pleaded guilty last month to defrauding clients, he no doubt expected the American courts to be tough with him. But even before the sentence is handed down, the pain has begun for Greenwood: he's been forced to auction his collection of 1,350 teddy bears, which until now have been displayed inpresentation cases at his home. Amazingly, the bears are thought to be worth £2m.

So who's gone and hired one of America's 'worst CEOs'.

Outlook Barely a week goes by without yet more job losses at Royal Bank of Scotland. Another 3,500 posts were trimmed yesterday. The total (as estimated by the Unite union) is at 21,500 since 2009. Some of the latest batch come as a consequence of the forced sale of more than 300 branches to Banco Santander. But many more are part of a continuing programme of lay-offs as Stephen Hester grapples with the wreckage left by his predecessor, Sir Fred Goodwin.

The Obama administration can't quite help itself.

A German banker?

Earnings of executives at Britain's leading companies are largely determined by a band of part-time directors whose job it is to oversee the way a company is run and ensure that those with day-to-day control act in the best interest of shareholders.

Royal Bank of Scotland suffered a major embarrassment yesterday when the state-owned bank was fined a record £5.6m by the City watchdog for failing to ensure that funds were not transferred to people under Treasury sanction.

Never let it be said that Roger Bootle's Capital Economics does not say what it thinks, even if it subsequently remembers to moderate its language. Issuing its latest thoughts on last week's global economic outlook from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the think-tank admits: "Our initial response to the OECD's recommendation that UK interest rates should rise to 3.5 per cent by the end of next year ('completely mad') may have been a bit extreme."

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who last week resigned from the board of easyJet in a dispute over strategy, is now facing a struggle to persuade other investors to join his activist campaign.