So, farewell, Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin, I see you have finally followed my example and left the RBS group, just such a shame that we are not leaving with the same pension entitlement, well a shame from my perspective at least. Goodwin was a man of his time and his time was up some little while ago and had been surviving on reputation for the last few years. He was one of the executives who put RBS in position to gobble up Nat West when they suffered one of these periodic and inexplicable losses of confidence. As a member of the National Executive Committee of BIFU, or UNIFI, can’t remember what it was calling itself at that time, I met with senior executives of Nat West at the time it was going down the tubes and it was clear that they did not understand what was causing the problem and that the new chairman at the time was clear that times would not be changing for the better if Nat West fell into the hands of RBS. Clearly he was not talking about the shit storm that has come about in recent times, he was talking to the union after all, but about the RBS approach to personnel, as personified by Goodwin and Harvard Business School alum, Gordon Pell. I’m sure he would have had a different approach had he been addressing a shareholders meeting. I still have shares in RBS from sharesave schemes and a pension to come, very soon should I so choose, so you may think that I have a rather ambivalent outlook. But not so, sadly I don’t believe that the current shade of Labour, that has nationalised RBS, has the balls or doctrine to want to force RBS to become more responsive to customers and staff, screw the shareholders in the short term and take the long view. But I guess there is too big a chunk of the national debt going to be tied up in what should be a private institution for HM Govt to be interested in the long haul and forcing a sea change in the country’s banking behemoths approach to Joe Public and small business.
I really can’t imagine that the current RBS staff are going to miss Fred’s turgid video presentations, I know I haven’t, and with the share price enumerated in pence and not pounds I don’t imagine the shareholders will either.
Anyone want to open a book on how long it will be before he has half a dozen new non-executive directorships to bolster his parlous financial position?