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Ben Stansall / AFP - Getty Images file
Fred Goodwin arrives at Downing Street in London for a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Goodwin who was knighted in 2004 for services to banking has had his Knighthood cancelled and annulled.
LONDON - Britain took the rare step of stripping former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Fred Goodwin of his knighthood, following intense criticism of his role in RBS' near-collapse during the 2008 credit crisis, and public anger towards wealthy bankers.
"The failure of RBS played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008-9 which, together with other macroeconomic factors, triggered the worst recession in the U.K. since the Second World War and imposed significant direct costs on British taxpayers and businesses," the government said in a statement.
"Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision maker at RBS at the time," the statement added. "In reaching this decision, it was recognised that widespread concern about Fred Goodwin's decisions meant that the retention of a Knighthood for 'services to banking' could not be sustained."
Goodwin was awarded the knighthood in 2004 but resigned in October 2008 as the bank was failing, provoking the public's fury by leaving with 16 million pounds ($25 million) in pension benefits. Billions in taxpayer funds were used to bailout the stricken bank.
The government said it would soon be announced that Goodwin's knighthood had been "cancelled and annulled."
The Scottish banker spearheaded RBS' disastrous acquisition of Dutch bank ABN AMRO, which nearly caused the collapse of RBS during the 2008 crisis.
RBS ended up having to be propped up with 45 billion pounds ($71 billion) of taxpayers' money, with the government finishing up with an 83 percent stake in the bank.
Goodwin told a committee at the House of Commons that he "could not be more sorry" for what had happened at RBS, BBC reported.
It is very rare for Britain to remove people of their knighthoods, and Goodwin joins the ranks of figures such as former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who forfeited an honorary knighthood.
The woes of RBS have come to symbolize for many in Britain more serious problems with the country's banking industry.
Many are still angry at the fact that bankers are continuing to get paid millions while elsewhere thousands lose their jobs as the economy weakens.
On Sunday, the current chief executive of RBS - Stephen Hester - was forced to decline a million pound share bonus after the award had been attacked by all major British political parties.
Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
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Our disgraced bankers got a big fat bonus, thanks to US government giveaway bailout.
No kidding. I bet his assets were not stripped... those that weren't handily hidden in the Cayamans...
Oh, and let's not forget about his $25 million 'pension' benefits.
Those should be stripped too and returned to taxpayers.
Prepare the burning torches, rakes, and shovels!
This banker got slapped with heavy fines and a huge prison sentence! What? You say he only got his meaningless knighthood status removed? oh....
Stripped of his Knighthood? Well, I'll just be gwaddamned! The British are just so mean. That's worse than hell sending one of its citizens to prison for rehabilitation.
The government bailouts were not given with any intention of those monies being used for bonuses or any other compensation. The banks chose to use this money for that purpose. I wish people would stop blaming the government for every single little thing. Such myopic blame is idiotique!
And so you apparently do not agree with the bailouts. Even though they came under Bush they had to be made. Imagine the largest commercial and investment banks all failing at the same time. Lending (the grease of the capitalist engine) would have totally ceased. It would have been an unmitigated disaster. It just amazes me that any politician can run on this issue (claiming the bailouts should not have happened).
So it's okay in England to be a drug fueled entertainer and receive knighthood. Nice to see it's all about the money there too.
Where did you get "drug fueled entertainer" from this article? Unless this banker had a side job only you know about.
My question, which I think is a fair one, why is this man not doing time of say 20 years for stealing people's money ? Wall Street crooks have been bailed out , given bonuses and no one has gone to jail. The system is unjust and corrupt along with the Judicial System. I do not see the Queen or the princes crying foul- oh, I am sorry , they just are decorations on holidays. But our Obama , our Justice System is for sale as well. No wonder Ron Paul frightens the powers that run this country. I am sure his Attorney General would not be smuggling arms to Mexico and the Wall Street crooks would not get a bailout and be in jail.
In the U.S. as in Britain, the things they did were decriminalized by the Republicans. Prior to their committing these offensive acts.
Hence, no penalties for destroying an entire economy.
"Business will always do the right thing" - GOP mantra.
Well Max... it's been going on since the nation's founding (though I wouldn't class Hamilton in with our bozos)
On July 4, 1791, during George Washington’s first term as the new nation’s first president, stock in Hamilton’s Bank of the United States, a kind of precursor to the Federal Reserve, went on sale. Interestingly, the shares where sold in the form of a scrip. As Chernow describes it; an investor would make a down-payment of $25 to receive a contract which entitled them to buy some number of shares at par and then pay off the balance due over the next eighteen months. So the activity centered around the buying of something that wasn’t actually a security… not a direct line to the crash of 2007, but surely an echo.
Some might argue that what happened next should have set off bi-partisan alarms and been the source for productive work by the new Congress. Instead, it just played a part in the bitter partisan divide that was forming in the young nation.
What we would term today, irrational exuberance, took hold as the price doubled and tripled sometimes on the same day. People newly turned speculator rushed in to the cities with carts full of gold in the hopes of getting in on the easy money. Through the following month the price of the scrip would grow to over $300. There was frenzy in the major cities of the north. Chernow quotes Benjamin Rush, John Adams personal physician and major medical mind of his time, as writing “The city of Philadelphia for several days has exhibited the marks of a great gaming house… Never did I see so universal a frenzy. Nothing else was spoken of but scrip in all companies, even by those who were not interested in it.” He then quotes Senator Rufus King as telling Hamilton; “The business was going on in a most alarming manner, mechanics deserting their shops, shopkeepers sending their goods to auction, and not a few of our merchants neglecting the regular and profitable commerce of the city”.
blog ReadingThinkingAndWriting com
We now live in an America that Hamilton invisioned. Big money, big business, and a standing army.
True... but I'm almost convinced that he honestly thought it was a good thing and that he wasn't just a tool of monied interests like many have suggested. After all, he was "rescued" from poverty on St. Croix when those interests recognized his genius... given that he had no father to speak of (abandoned) and his mother died when he was a child, one can see how he may have been blinded to such obvious problems.
I wasn't aware that knighthoods could be stripped like that. (I think I prefer the old school way of doing that - a nice long stay in the Tower of London.)
Or as the Red Queen would say, "Off with their heads!"
We got screwed, they got screwed. AGAIN!
Hopefully no dragons attack England any time soon.
Being a knight probably meant something...about 500 years ago.
and yet still Iceland is the only nation to get it right. Put the bankers in jail, put the government officials who got in bed with them in jail. At least the British did SOMETHING though, even if it is only a figurative gesture. Here in America we've pretty much applauded what those scumbags did, paying their bonuses and calling anyone who wants to jail them a socialist.
Iceland, first in the first world!
MAke him pay back the money he stole!
99% of bankers provide no service to society, they just use our hard earned money to make money for themselves. The gubmint should loan direct to citizens, no money grubbing bastards in between.
Wow what a punishment. The poor guy got his meaningless knighthood status stripped from him. What a load @!$%#. You Brits should be pissed.
Not all American political parties would attack such a bonus. The Republicans would overwhelmingly embrace it. After they socialized the banks and Wall Street with the stroke of Dubya's pen they were all for "performance bonuses" of "top talent" as long as it was funded by the middle/working/lower class! Yes siree, otherwise these top performing, top talent, people would take their disastrous greed based intentions and inflict them on someone else!!
So he's no longer 'Sir-A**hole' but he gets to keep all his millions. What a tragedy for him.
At first glance I read "Manhood" not "knighthood" -- would have been a much more intersting story.
So when will the US government start going after our Wall Street criminals?
Can't. Republicans from Reagan through Bush decriminalized their behavior.
The casinos of the City of London and Wall Street are all back in business, bigger than ever with our retirements as their stakes. Until the Glass-Stegall Act is reinstated, we can expect more financial and economic ruin.
Banks used to be in the business of holding peoples money safely and then loaning it to qualified borrowers... Bad enough, but these days it is more akin to creating money and gambling with it hoping for massive wins and pushing the losses to the taxpayer when it does not work out.
I would have liked to see prison time and restitution but instead they got obscene bonuses and kept their jobs...
What did his knighthood get him anyway.
Royal Escort Services
whoop tee dooo. So what, he's walking with $25 million and who knows how much more.
and yet the twats in the Icb (Irish central Bank) are walking around scot free and with even bigger pensions €64 billion we will have to pay back to the international bondholders of Anglo-Irish bank for a crime I didn't even commit and now Europe and the rest of the developed western world are forcing austerity on us for crimes amounting to financial terrorism and extortion well I will never put a cent of my money towards getting those criminals both apart of the banking system and politician out of the mess they created
You are not alone, Yog . There are millions like you in the U.S. What happens when the people have nothing to lose-they lose it and the banksters will face the gillotine , just like in the Friench revolution. I see a storm on the horizon and it does not look pretty. The ruling elites have gotten arrogant and the 99% are getting furious-it is going to blow up.
Gee....!
Isnt there something we can do like this in the US?