Ian Fraser

ON Thursday, two bankers and four consultants were jailed for their part in a £245 million loans scandal which caused the destruction of up to 200 viable small-business customers of the bank HBOS, and is thought to have caused losses of £1 billion at HBOS’s new parent, Lloyds Banking Group. It was the culmination of an investigation in which I’d been involved for almost a decade as a journalist.

A GROUP of almost 500 businesses suing the Royal Bank of Scotland for allegedly destroying their firms and seizing their assets is threatening legal action against the Financial Conduct Authority if it does not immediately publish its long-awaited report into the scandal.

EDINBURGH will never recover from the failure of its two largest banks at the height of the banking crisis in 2008, according to a former Scottish Government economic adviser.

Lloyds Banking Group has scrapped plans to sue its fellow state-owned bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, as part of a large group of investors following what City sources allege is "pressure" from George Osborne's Treasury.

RBS’s most recent annual report and accounts are emblazoned with the words ‘Earning our customers’ trust’. The pamphlet contains about 150 mentions of the word ‘trust’ and 518 of the word ‘customer’ over the course of its 515 pages Inside McEwan writes, ‘We are determined to reach our aspiration of being number one for customer service, trust and advocacy’.

In what is seen as the first American-style class action to hit the English courts, Lloyds, which is suing RBS through nine of its pensions and investment management subsidiaries, has joined more than 40,000 individual and institutional investors already seeking redress from RBS.

There were a few shreds of good news, including that the Treasury has decided against breaking up RBS into a "bad bank" and a "good bank", and the fact that RBS had managed to lift its core tier-1 capital ratio - a measure of financial strength - to 11.6% from 9.1%.

Thames Valley Police has already handed evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service. The papers have since been reviewed by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer and Attorney General Dominic Grieve. The Sunday Herald has learned that the charges – that could include corruption – could be pressed within weeks.