Nigel Farage has said that NatWest Group boss Alison Rose is “unfit” to run the bank after she tonight admitted she was the source of the BBC’s incorrect story about his de-banking row with Coutts – but, ludicrously, the bank’s Board has said it still has “full confidence” in her. The Mail has the story.
In a statement released this evening, Dame Alison conceded she was “wrong” to have discussed Mr. Farage’s account with the BBC’s Business Editor Simon Jack.
She offered her “sincere apologies” to the former UKIP leader, as well as saying sorry to the Board of NatWest Group – which owns Coutts – and her colleagues. But the bank’s Board has said it still has “full confidence” in its under fire leader.
Dame Alison has been under pressure after it emerged she sat next to Mr. Jack at a charity dinner the night before the BBC wrongly reported Mr. Farage was dropped as a Coutts customer due to a lack of wealth.
It has since been revealed how Mr. Farage was ditched by Coutts due to his political views.
But the controversy does not seem to have threatened Dame Alison’s future at the beleaguered banking group.
NatWest Group Chairman Sir Howard Davies this evening said the Board “retains full confidence” in Dame Alison as Chief Executive.
He also praised her as an “outstanding leader” as he backed her to remain in post, although he suggested she could suffer a bonus or pay cut as a result of the scandal. …
Speaking on his GB News show this evening, Mr. Farage again called for the resignation of senior figures at NatWest and Coutts.
He added that the Government, which owns a 39% stake in the banking giant, should say it has no confidence in its management at an investors meeting due to take place this Friday.
The Brexit campaigner said: “It is perfectly clear to me that Peter Flavel, the CEO of Coutts, has not done his job at all.
“It is perfectly clear to me that Alison Rose is unfit to be the CEO of a big group and that Howard Davies, who is supposed to be in charge of governance, has failed as well.
“Given that we have a 39% stake in this, we the great British public, I think at that investor statement on Friday morning, the Government ought to say we have no confidence in this management.
“Frankly, I think they should all go and that is my conclusion from what we’ve learned this afternoon.” …
He accused the bank leadership of acting against the Financial Conduct Authority’s code of conduct.
“I think they [the Board of Directors] are doing their best to prop up Alison Rose, her remuneration will be hit. She might not get the £5.2 million she got last year – gosh, my heart bleeds, I’m sure yours does to.” …
Sir Howard said the NatWest Group Board would commission an independent review of the closure of Mr. Farage’s account with Coutts and would publish its findings.
He admitted the “overall handling of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Farage accounts has been unsatisfactory, with serious consequences for the bank”.
But, offering his backing to Dame Alison, Sir Howard added: “As she recognises, she should not have spoken in the way she did.
“This was a regrettable error of judgement on her part. The events will be taken into account in decisions on remuneration at the appropriate time.
“However, after careful reflection the Board has concluded that it retains full confidence in Ms. Rose as CEO of the bank.
“She has proved, over the last four years to be an outstanding leader of the institution, as demonstrated by our results.
“The Board therefore believes it is clearly in the interest of all the bank’s shareholders and customers that she continues in post.”
Worth reading in full.
Dame Alison Rose’s statement in full:
I recognise that in my conversations with Simon Jack of the BBC, I made a serious error of judgement in discussing Mr. Farage’s relationship with the bank. Given the consequences of this, I want to address the questions that have been raised and set out the substance of the conversations that took place.
Believing it was public knowledge, I confirmed that Mr. Farage was a Coutts customer and that he had been offered a NatWest bank account. Alongside this, I repeated what Mr. Farage had already stated, that the bank saw this as a commercial decision. I would like to emphasise that in responding to Mr. Jack’s questions I did not reveal any personal financial information about Mr. Farage. In response to a general question about eligibility criteria required to bank with Coutts and NatWest I said that guidance on both was publicly available on their websites. In doing so, I recognise that I left Mr. Jack with the impression that the decision to close Mr. Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one.
I was not part of the decision-making process to exit Mr. Farage. This decision was made by Coutts, and I was informed in April that this was for commercial reasons. At the time of my conversations with Mr. Jack, I was not in receipt of the contents of the Coutts Wealth Reputational Risk Committee materials subsequently released by Mr. Farage. I have apologised to Mr. Farage for the deeply inappropriate language contained in those papers and the Board has commissioned a full independent review into the decision and process to ensure that this cannot happen again.
Put simply, I was wrong to respond to any question raised by the BBC about this case. I want to extend my sincere apologies to Mr. Farage for the personal hurt this has caused him and I have written to him today.
I would like to say sorry to the Board and my colleagues. I started my career working for National Westminster Bank. It is an institution I care about enormously and have always been proud to be a part of. It has been the privilege of my career to lead the bank and I am grateful to the Board for entrusting me with this role. It is therefore all the more regrettable that my actions have compounded an already difficult issue for the Group.
Former Tory cabinet minister David Davis said: “I’m afraid I think that Dame Alison Rose has little choice but to resign. And frankly, I’m astonished that the Board of Directors indicated full confidence in her.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg has expressed his doubts that Dame Alison would still be in post by Friday’s shareholders meeting, saying: “I think the pressure on her is going to get bigger and bigger. You can’t admit to this type of indiscretion and remain [a] senior banker, you have broken [a] key rule of [the] bankers code.”
The Telegraph is reporting that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt are understood to have “significant concerns” about Dame Alison staying in her post and there is expectation within the Government that she will have to quit.
Quite why that isn’t obvious to Rose and the NatWest Board yet is anyone’s guess, but I imagine it has something to do with not wanting their prized ‘diverse’ CEO to become the victim of dastardly Mr. Brexit.
Stop Press: According to Sky News, Dame Alison is due to quit on Wednesday morning following an emergency meeting of the NatWest Board. The focus will now shift to Sir Howard Davies, the Chairman of the Board who initially said it had full confidence in her, and Peter Flavel, the CEO of Coutts. Will all three be gone by the end of the week? We can but hope.
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Why don’t we just call fact-checked stories wrongspeak? At least we would all know where we were.
How about calling these misleading statements/fact checks ‘trans-facts’?
Or just ‘trash talk’?
In other news foxes vote to guard hen houses, and men enjoy having sex with women. Of course socialists like to censor ppl that’s what they do, non lefties are utterly deluded to believe rational debate is possible with these folk. You disagree with a lefty fundamentally it’s the gulag for you in their perfect world. Socialism emerged from the French Revolution with its main enforcer the guillotine and little has actually changed since.
See also the case of Professor Richet, first mentioned I think on Wattsupwiththat.
He wrote a perfectly sensible article for a history of science publication called Copernicus. Peer reviewed and ready to publish, pressure on publisher led to its withdrawal.
All he said was that, looking at the last four glaciations over about half a million years, when times started to get cold carbon dioxide levels stayed high for about eight hundred years. So change in co2 concentration follows temperature change and therefore cannot be the cause of that change. Decarbonisation unnecessary.
Copernicus, eh? How ironic.
https://www.history-of-geo-and-space-sciences.net/2021-05-26_hgss-2021-1_latest-version-of-the-manuscript.pdf
If AFP were being honest it would call its piece an “Opinion Check” of claims, made by people who depend on climate catastrophe claims to keep their positions and funding flowing from the unwitting taxpayer.
Anthropogenic climate change for dummies: Take 100 scientists – 50 who believ CO2 is the primary driver of climate change and 50 who don’t. Out of the second group, trash / tarnish /cancel the reputation of 90% of the scientists and their papers and coerce publishers to withdraw or not publish. Result! The science is now settled as published papers show that 95% of scientist believe that anthropogenic CO2 emmsisions are the primary driver of global climate. Repeat for vaccines, mask mandates etc and use captured media sources to reinforce.
Potsdam, Otto and Springer.
Does one need to know more?
It’s at the point where we should just stop calling it science, and instead refer to it by the more accurate: “Tik-Tok / CCP-driven agitprop designed to present all pro-growth, patriotic and individualist policies in the West as evil fascism, so we accelerate our decline to the benefit of China.”
It’s very easy to see what Otto is writing about. Quoting Wikipedia
Otto works together with lawyers in lawsuit that seek compensation for victims of extreme events from companies and governments with historical responsibility for climate change.
In other words, she seeks to extract climate change reparations from American and European governments and companies based on a methodology she developed for associating natural disasters with so-called climate change. As is the case with all the other green scammers, her vocation is making up justifications why she and her buddies are entitled to other people’s money.
Springer has blocked numerous “Covid skeptical” papers without explanation, so my bet would be on them blocking this one. Funny how “Climate and Covid skeptical” is a pretty clean dividing line between people; it’s taken over from “left” and “right” to a large extent.
Whether global warming is real or not, and I am still not sure, there is enough evidence to suggest that changes in the climate are related to naturally occurring events and to man made events other than the burning of fossil fuels. In the latter category are rainforest destruction and water diversion (check out the climatic alterations around the Aral Sea). But anyway we know that sea levels were much higher even 1000 years ago when our locality, Romney Marsh, was largely under water. What we don’t know is what the polar ice caps looked like then. To balance the question of how emissions cause warming, I would like to know what effect the air mixing caused by wind farms has on meteorological conditions.
Who is the woman in the photo? It doesn’t say, damages credibility, looks like a random person. Also, you should include a link to the SkyNews clip.
Science is never settled. And if someone/some people is/are proposing a counter-argument to the “received wisdom” then it demonstrably isn’t settled.
If the evidence for man-made climate change/climate emergency was overwhelming, you’d think the advocates would be only too keen to debate the issue and present their evidence to be challenged.
But it isn’t science, it’s a cult and the cultists mustn’t be challenged.
It is blatantly apparent that any organisation or policy with net zero or climate change within its title, is there to promote or enforce its own agenda as any slight to their existance questions their validity and purpose. The term Peer Review in the case of these organisations is to get a mate to agree with your data.
Why are the facts about CO2 not publicised by mainstream media:-
1) the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently 0.042%
2) CO2 at this current slight increase contributes significantly to plant and crop growth and is reducing starvation in some countries.
3) If CO2 levels fall below 150 parts per million (0.015%) plant growth would fail to the point of the whole world suffering from lack of food.
4) progressively increased levels of CO2 do not proportionally contribute to global warming and current levels have not increased it very much. Other greehouse gases that we can’t easily control have a much greater effect.
5) The Uk’s additional contribution to CO2 is so small by comparison to that by China, India and the US that any change we made would make no significant difference.
6) The current drive to nett zero CO2 is driven by incorrect virtue signalling and the money made by companies who benefit from products that are said to reduce it. Many products made by these companies produce more CO2 in their manufacture than they will ever save in their lifetime. That applies to some electric cars.
7) Most climate models are deliberately fed with wrong inaccurate data to give the result wanted and so far every one claiming climate disaster over the last few decades has proven to be wrong. Its difficult to prove whether models covering longer periods could be correct but the track record of them would suggest they will be inaccurate as well.
8) CO2 is one of the things required for life on our planet and is not a pollutant.
MSM aren’t at all interested in facts. They just get in the way of the opinions put out by those who drive the ‘official narrative’, a.k.a. “The Science”
As scientists become more and more dependent on government funding, and climate science is almost entirely funded by government, then their findings require the greatest level of scrutiny. We often hear things like “research shows” or “scientists find” etc. But since climate science is mainly computer model projections of future climate full of assumptions then nothing has been “found”. It has been speculated. Anyone who thinks government funding does not influence science is really very naive, and many of those same people would be quick to hammer any science that was funded by fossil fuel interests as being “agenda driven”. But what makes those people think government have no agenda? Ofcourse they do. The regulatory state always has an agenda.