The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acquired the nickname of the Serious Flawed Office in its early years of operation as a unit fighting big financial crime in the 1990s. That was after a series of flops of high profile cases, against George Walker, the Maxwells and Roger Levitt. Latterly its reputation has improved, although its decision to drop the Saudi Arabian aspect of a corruption case against BAE Systems saw it widely criticised, because it was seen to...

Barclays is being investigated by the Financial Services Authority over whether it disclosed in a comprehensive and timely fashion all the fees it paid to advisors when raising more than £5bn of emergency capital from middle eastern investors at the end of 2008. The FSA's probe also relates to a debt sale by Barclays the following year. In today's interim results from Barclays, it disclosed that four current and...

There has been progress at semi-nationalised Lloyds. Loans are going bad at a slower rate, and are not expected by Lloyds to deteriorate any time soon - which is another one of those benign trends that makes the current UK recession seem slightly odd. The bank has further reduced its dependence on unreliable wholesale funding. And although there has been a further fall in the...

Centrica was unhappy this morning at my pointing out on the Today Programme that its revenues from supplying gas to households in the UK rose 21% to £3.2bn the first half of the year, whereas consumption of gas increased 3.2%. I drew the implication, which is unavoidable, that prices charged by its British Gas business had risen - and that this might upset a few people. There is a similar story in electricity...

Late last night Moody's put the eurozone's operational bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, on so-called "negative outlook", which means it is at serious risk of losing its AAA credit rating. There was nothing surprising at this announcement. It was made inevitable by Moody's earlier decision to declare that Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were in danger of losing their cherished AAA ratings - in that Germany...

Is it possible that Barclays' board has been misled by Anthony Salz's urbane manner and establishment background into thinking that his review of the bank's business practices will deliver an answer to them which is comforting and anodyne? I have known the former Freshfields senior partner for donkey's years. And my impression has consistently been that he is tough and moral. There is a chance that he could leave Barclays in the embarrassing position of...

Once again Spain, and to a lesser extent Italy, is being forced towards a full-scale eurozone/IMF rescue programme, because of the inter-connectedness of public-sector and banking liabilities. As the price of Spanish government debt plummets, that generates losses for Spain's banks, which hold around 250bn euros of the country's government bonds, equivalent to a third of central government debt. That then increases...

From my conversations with senior Barclays sources, I have learned there is a favoured candidate for each of its top vacancies. The former head of the civil service, Lord O'Donnell, is the board of the bank's preferred choice as new chairman. And Bill Winters, the former JP Morgan banker, is the front-runner to succeed Bob Diamond as chief executive of the bank. There is only...

In the light of the phone-hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry, there is a strong temptation to read a great deal into Rupert Murdoch's resignation from the boards of three UK companies that control the Sun, the Times and his other British newspapers. And given how much power and wealth those newspapers have conferred on him, the termination of his directorships of those UK companies have a symbolic importance....

With 1000 branches, 10% of all branches of UK banks, and 7% of the current account market, the enlarged Co-op should represent serious new competition to the giants of British banking. And for the Co-op, it looks like an amazingly good deal. It is paying a maximum of £750m for 632 branches and for capital that Lloyds is bestowing on the business of £1.5bn - which means there will be a loss on the transaction of up to £750m for Lloyds....