Any Other Business – 16/05
YOU WOULD perhaps presume that RBS would want to keep schtum about its getting sued over the 2008 rights issue, but its chairman Sir Philip Hampton did quite the opposite at the Wincott Foundation Award luncheon at Guildhall yesterday. Hampton was the speaker at the event (the start of which was delayed by the bomb-scare kerfuffle at Bank) and he gleefully reminded the room it was the last day that you could apply to sue the bank over the alleged misleading issue. Luckily the room was mainly full of hacks rather than investors, who might have taken leave to speak to their lawyers immediately. Hampton also went on to depart his pearls of wisdom on the Astrazeneca/Pfizer debacle, saying he thought the whole thing raised questions around long-term economic planning. Surely RBS has raised similar questions itself…
FOR THOSE of you wondering what incoming MPC member Kristin Forbes is like, we can offer one titbit that might shed some light. Forbes, appointed as the replacement for Ben Broadbent, seems to like symbolism. She and her husband, a financial professional, got married in 2000 at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Bretton Woods, of course, is the place where the 1944 eponymous agreement was signed which gave birth to the International Monetary Fund. Fitting, no?