Business Diary: Airdrie expands – with Souter's help
There's no rest for Stagecoach founder Sir Brian Souter. Fresh from a victory over Google last week, as reported in this column, he's moving on to a more positive use of his time. Sir Brian will be cutting the ribbon on a new branch of the Airdrie Savings Bank this week – a proud moment for the institution since its move into Falkirk represents its first ever venture outside of Lanarkshire. How fortunate it has someone to hold its hand.
Perfect play for Yorkshire Bank
Good news for David Thorburn, the relatively new chief executive of Yorkshire Bank: the local theatre in Harrogate is about to put on a production of Dad's Army. A couple of weeks ago, Thorburn told the Yorkshire Post he was proud his bank was a bit boring. "There's a proportion of the population that want something that's predictable, dependable and stable," Thornburn said. "That's the advantage of being a bit Captain Mainwaring." Time for staff to find out what he means?
The real rogue traders in the City
Matt Taibi, the Rolling Stone magazine journalist best-known for christening Goldman Sachs as the "giant vampire squid" has a take on why UBS's alleged rogue trader is really just one of many. "You're called a rogue trader if you're some over-perspired 28 year-old newbie who bypasses internal audits and quality control to make a disastrous trade that could sink the company," says Taibi. "But if you're a well-groomed 60 year-old CEO who uses his authority to ignore quality control and internal audits in order to make disastrous trades that could sink the company, you get a bailout, a bonus, and heroic treatment in an Andrew Ross Sorkin book."
Taxman warns of fake email scam
Given that HM Revenue & Customs so rarely issues anything other than a tax demand, it is a surprise to us that it has seen a 300 per cent rise in fraudulent emails purporting to offer people tax refunds – we wouldn't have thought it was a credible strategy. Still, someone is obviously falling for the trick. For the record, HMRC says it never contacts people about refunds electronically and that handing over your bank account details is going to result in you losing money not making it.
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