It is not former Co-operative Bank Chairman Paul Flower’s peccadilloes that bother me. That’s merely an amusing sideshow. It is the bankrupt Bank‘s audacious reinforcement of anti-business sentiment and its bashing of its competitors’ practices that drive me mad.  Read on ›

Barclays Bank has to pay a penalty of £290 million to the Financial Services Authority in the UK, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Department of Justice in the US. Its crime? Between 2005 and 2009, it lied to them about the interest rate it was paying to borrow money. The reason? To benefit the bank’s derivatives trading positions by either increasing its profits or minimizing its losses. What can we PR pros say? Read on ›

Last week there was “outrage” over the bonus awarded to Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland. This week we are set for another moral outburst when Barclays announces expected profits of more than $9 billion, which will result in its CEO Bob Diamond pocketing around $3 million. In the midst of a global crisis that heralds austerity for many, what strategy should be adopted by PRs tasked with defending banks, bankers and bonuses? Read on ›

When local boy Roman Geiser, Burson-Marsteller’s Swiss CEO, was catapulted into the stratosphere as Chief Operating Officer for EMEA, I just had to make the twenty-minute train ride to Zurich to interview him. Read on ›

There’s a timely call in today’sTimes for bank bosses to take the lead in restoring the reputations of their own institutions. Some have, but the message remains valuable. Read on ›

PR Week reports that the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) executive director of communications Lesley McLeod says the banks are getting a bum rap because of “inexperienced’” reporters who “fail to understand the crisis” or the “issues” it presents. What, and the BBA has to sit idly by? Why doesn’t it get stuck in? Read on ›

Barclay’s Chief Executive, John Varley, has been brilliant on Sky TV, the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (and later this week on Panorama). Not a moment before time, we have a senior current banking figure not only talking (that’s very rare) but talking like a human being. Read on ›

Cleared snow from our road. Went to Basel. Got back and my wife said I had a letter from Peter Kurer, chairman of UBS. Whoopee. And yikes. Perhaps he’s suing me over my blog. Read on ›

Carly Fiorina, the former chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is spot-on in advising CEOs on how to restore trust in their role. Read on ›

Here is a good example of preemptive crisis management. It is a text-book example of how to manage a controversial issue by facing up to market realities. Read on ›