Chopping spree: Tony Blair's spouse comes to NYC to sue a meltdown bank for fraud
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| Cherie Booth: She's preparing to flip her wig in NYC over UK bank's antics. |
Among the host of lawyers squaring off against the Scottish bank will be Tony Blair's spouse, sharp lawyer Cherie Booth, hired as a "special adviser" by the plaintiffs. It can't help the bank to have a former prime minister's spouse hounding you, whether or not she's a good lawyer.
RBS is clearly in a whole world of trouble — it's accused of ripping off (just in this one case) not only two local governments in the U.K. and a Dutch metalworkers pension fund, but also billions from U.S. investors. The Scottish bank can all the lawyers it wants; they're still not going to be as experienced as the U.S. firm representing the plaintiffs. The Banking Times (U.K.) says Booth will be working with U.S. law firm Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman and Robbins, which won compensation for Enron's shareholders in 2001. In the upcoming case, the entire RBS board "at the time of its near collapse" late last year is reportedly named in the suit, the British paper adds.
Pensions on both ends of the scale are an extremely sore subject. The pension funds that have lost billions around the globe are obviously huge, but they consist of retirement money for millions of commoners.
There's been more of a furor (so far, in both the U.S. and overseas) about pensions on the high end of the scale. As in the U.S., British lawmakers have come unglued about the outrageous pensions granted to gangbankers like RBS's former CEO, Sir Fred Goodwin, who got a great retirement package despite being given the bum's rush from the bank late last year.
Pensions, bonuses — the issue of exec compensation won't die down in the U.K., just as the furor over AIG's bonuses won't soon stop over here. The execs continue to stoke others' anger: Citigroup and like-minded firms are feverishly trying to work their way around strict new limits on exec pay.
Will the Obama administration claw back bonuses given to AIG's execs and other bigwigs? British officials are taking the same tack as the Obama approach: public floggings. Clawbacks are another thing altogether.
But a big lawsuit for alleged fraud is a start. Regarding the RBS case, the BBC reports today:
Lord Myners said RBS "bent over backwards" to provide Sir Fred Goodwin with a generous pension and described his £700,000-a-year retirement package as "outrageous".
Appearing before the Commons treasury committee, the minister faced a barrage of hostile questions from MPs of all parties.
But Lord Myners insisted that Sir Fred's pension settlement was completely at odds with government instructions to the bank to ensure that failure was not rewarded.
At the same time, of course, RBS was allegedly ripping off the pension funds (representing commoners) that invested in the bank. London-based Investment & Pensions Europe says of the lawsuit that Booth is working on:
Not exactly the kind of profitable globalization that gangbankers on Wall Street and in the City envisioned when they wanted to rake in dough all over the planet. Well, maybe it is.
