Dirty money hits Denmark
WE MAY bemoan the enthusiasm with which Royal Bank of scotland is closing branches. But as Danske Bank is discovering, branches spin fairy tales worthy of hans Christian Andersen.
The Us Department of Justice has weighed into the investigation at the Danish bank’s branch in Estonia which is at the centre of a £175bn money laundering scandal. That is almost ten times the Baltic country’s total output.
One might have thought that sums of such scale moving through the Estonia branch might have raised the suspicions of compliance officers, European bank regulators and the board where former British regulator Carol sergeant is vice-chairman.
But sergeant, as former chief risk officer at lloyds and enforcer at the Financial services Authority as the UK banking system rumbled towards the buffers, is not particularly known for her foresight.
Money originating in Russia and its satellites has a nasty habit of bringing down banking systems. Icelandic banks were virtually destroyed when deposits from Russia dried up. similarly, Britain sent experts off to Cyprus when banks there, loaded up with Russian deposits, were in difficulty in 2013.
In Britain the National Crime Agency is frantically busy, post- salisbury, probing where Russian money processed through the so-called laundromat washed up.
Chelsea’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich may be among the first tycoons ever to be refused residency in switzerland because of alleged money laundering.
Pesky, off-the-map branches are a cause of endless embarrassment for big banks. hsBC’s reputation was badly damaged by rogue behaviour at its Geneva branch and money laundering in Mexico.
lloyds was at the centre of a probe over claims of a cover-up of information relating to fraud at the former hBOs branch in Reading. The idea that little Estonia and honourable Denmark should be at the centre of a potential $1trillion money laundering scam boggles the mind.
It doesn’t speak well to post-crash policing of Continental banking.
Winter wonder
As Britain plots a post-Brexit future there is no better place to look than Cambridge.
The award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to sir Greg Winter (along with Us colleagues) is a case in point.
his work on the evolution of antibodies is proving critical in treating a range of conditions including metastatic cancers.
The research at the Medical Research Council’s laboratory of Molecular Biology has led to three great entrepreneurial biotech creations in Cambridge. They are Antibody Technology, now part of pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca, Domantis, which has been acquired by GlaxosmithKline, and Bicycle Therapeutics, a strategic partnership with AZ.
The excellence of Britain’s research universities – Cambridge lays claim to 107 Nobel prizes alone – is critical to the UK as it strikes out on its own.
That is a major reason why the Government has to make sure key resources including R&D finance, tax incentives and fasttrack drug approvals are given priority during Brexit implementation. Car makers should not scoop the pool simply because the bosses – Nissan is the latest – shout the loudest. The future growth engine in Britain will be based on intellectual capacity in pharma, high-tech such as AI, smart chips, fintech and much else.
The encouraging aspect of pharma is that discoveries have been embedded in our world-class drug firms, GsK and Astra.
Pity the same cannot be said for Cambridge chip innovator Arm holdings, part of Japan’s softbank, where valuable intellectual property has been mysteriously sold to China at a knockdown price. It is in the national interest that we nurture our research base and are careful to make sure the fruits do not vanish overseas.
Golden silence
PREDATORy investor Elliott Advisors is quick to the barricades at even the slightest hint of criticism about its methods or when light is shone upon the way founder of Paul singer and his son Gordon, who runs the london operation, conduct themselves.
It demands full transparency from companies such as miner BhP Billiton which it wants to shake up. On its own affairs, notably a wage bill of £88.6m from revenues of £131.8m last year, it is quiet. Funny that.