Swipe at Goodwin removed from FSA report into RBS

"No evidence of incompetence...... " Aside from anything else that went on at RBS, how could the price paid for ABN Amro be described as competent?

There wasn't a tick box for that qquestion so it wasn't asked

If someone not competent to run an international bank gets to the level where he's doing just that, then that's an issue for the board and the shareholdewrs.

As someone involved in buying and selling private companies it is obvious that the limited extent of due dilligence performed under Goodwin`s stewardship on the disastrous ABN Amro is...well...beyond incompetent.

We used to use RBS debt to help purchase many of our companies. If any of these RBS employees had failed to provide full and complete due diligence then RBS would not invest (and the individuals would have been sacked). Pity they didn`t apply the same approach to the likes of Goodwin!!!

Given that we are not allowed to see the report, why was Goodwin and his legal team allowed to see it?

Then, is not the fact that RBS collapsed under Goodwin's management following the ABN takeover, prima facia evidence that he was not competent to run an international bank?

This is just an expensive jobs for the boys cover up.

It will be the same with HBOS. The same incompetent people some of whom have returned to the bank on huge salaries. There is no justice. The regulator has failed and will fall into the waste bin of history.

Whilst the regulator may have had no evidence to back up the accusation that Goodwin 'lacked the experience to run an international bank' , that doesn't necessarily mean that such evidence didn't exist. All it means is that the regulator didn't have it or, if it did, that it did nothing with it. Surely, in the light of subsequent events, the regulator should have had such evidence before, under Goodwin's leadership, RBS all but imploded?

To an extent, I'm sympathetic to the FSA's situation. It was given a mandate that it was patently ill-equipped to fulfil, on top of which it was instructed by the Treasury to concentrate its firepower in any direction it chose other than the banks. These are known facts, not speculation. Thus was born the RDR.

Then again, Hector Sants and, before him, John Tiner must have known these things but neither of them had the integrity or backbone to stand up and declare them to their masters. Had they done so, they'd probably have been told either just to get on with the brief as best they could with the resources available to them or start looking for another job.

If the regulator had no evidence to back up his inability to manage an international bank Wher does this leave the politicians who are trying to strip him of his knighthood?

When you think about it, there's precious little evidence to suggest that many of the people at the top of the FSA are competent to handle the responsibilities and enormous powers at their disposal. But, hey, ho, we seem to be stuck with them whether we like it or not.

Surely it's now irrelevant whether the comment has been cut from the report as the very same comment is now in the public domain, and probably considered by most to be correct. Whether I have evidence or not is also irrelevant as I don't believe it is yet illegal to have an opinion?

Sir Fred invented a new version of Monopoly - he just omitted the go Straight to Jail' part!