{"id":17472,"date":"2026-04-20T05:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/17472\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T05:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:17:08","slug":"the-arrogant-superbanker-whose-stunning-hubris-brought-britain-to-its-knees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/17472\/","title":{"rendered":"The arrogant superbanker whose stunning hubris brought Britain to its knees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who broke Britain?<\/a>\u00a0Welcome to\u00a0The i Paper\u2019s\u00a0opinion series in which our range of experts tackle this question and identify the individuals whose decisions caused the country\u2019s biggest problems.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0William Beveridge: The man to blame for Britain\u2019s disastrous benefits system<\/a>
\u2022\u00a0This woman tried to fix childbirth. Instead she accidentally tortured millions<\/a>
\u2022\u00a0The money man whose gigantic error left Britain destitute<\/a>
\u2022\u00a0You won\u2019t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country<\/a>
\u2022\u00a0The American psychologist who destroyed British families with sexist poison<\/a>
\u2022\u00a0Boris Johnson wrecked Britain. But this man left even deeper scars<\/a><\/p>\n

How did we end up here? Why did Brexit happen? Why has the public seemingly lost trust in our institutions and the technocrats who run them? And why do things feel so much worse than they did 20 years ago? Future historians will wrestle with these questions because there are so many competing explanations, each appealing in its own way.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of structural explanations for how we arrived at this juncture: decades of stagnant wages, the hollowing out of Britain\u2019s industrial base and the growing gulf between the wealth of London and the rest of the country. But contingency matters too. It is striking to consider that, had two men not died suddenly of heart attacks, we might inhabit a very different country today. Both Tony Blair and the banker Fred Goodwin rose to positions of power because their predecessors expired unexpectedly \u2013 Labour leader John Smith in 1994 and Charles Love, chief executive of Clydesdale Bank, a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Fred Anderson Goodwin, born on 17 August, 1958, went on to become the most consequential British banker of his generation. As chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland he transformed a cautious Scottish lender into a global financial giant. For a time he was celebrated as a managerial genius \u2013 knighted for services to banking in 2004 and widely admired in the City for his ruthless efficiency. But the same qualities that made Goodwin a star ultimately helped bring down the bank he ran and saddled British taxpayers with the largest bailout in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

The moment that defined Goodwin\u2019s career arrived in 2007. That year, Royal Bank of Scotland led a consortium in a \u00a348bn takeover of the Dutch bank ABN AMRO, the largest banking acquisition the world had ever seen. By 2008, RBS had briefly become the largest bank in the world by assets. It was an incredible gamble \u2013 later recognised as a stroke of spectacular hubris \u2013 executed at the very peak of the global credit bubble. While rivals hesitated as markets began to wobble, Goodwin forced ahead. Within a year, the deal would look less like a masterstroke than one of the most catastrophic misjudgements in the history of modern banking.<\/p>\n

In another age Fred Goodwin might have been recognised sooner for what he was: a vain, egotistical bully with delusions of grandeur. He was, in many respects, a fabulist whose reputation was built on hype and hot air. Yet, he rose rapidly through Britain\u2019s banking system at a moment when the casino wheels of capitalism seemed destined to spin forever. He was given the moniker \u201cFred the shred<\/a>\u201d because of his treatment of subordinates. His morning meetings were called \u201cmorning beatings\u201d by terrified staff. He ordered executives to pitch him an idea in the time it took him to eat a banana.<\/p>\n

Goodwin had wanted RBS to be a global player. In this ambition he was hardly unusual. The late 90s and early 2000s were the high tide of financial globalisation, when banks were encouraged to grow ever larger and more complex. Regulators applauded expansion while politicians praised the dynamism of the City of London and investors rewarded executives who pursued scale above all else. In such an environment caution was treated as synonymous with weakness. The only direction that seemed to make sense was up.<\/p>\n

Goodwin had been deeply unpopular at Clydesdale Bank, where he began his banking career. Staff were so relieved to see him leave after just 15 months as chief executive that some reportedly opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. According to journalist Ian Fraser, whose book Shredded: Inside RBS, the Bank that Broke Britain provides a gripping account of Goodwin\u2019s rise and fall, he was a \u201csociopathic bully whose achievements had been overhyped\u201d. The story of RBS, where Goodwin became chief executive in March 2000, is, according to Fraser, \u201ca case study in how not to manage and regulate a bank\u201d.<\/p>\n

And yet, Goodwin was fortunate to be making his name in banking at a time when successive governments were content to look the other way. It was an era of \u201clight-touch\u201d regulation in which both major political parties helped create a system that gave bankers like Goodwin free rein. The governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were enthusiastic champions of the City of London during this period. Brown\u2019s decision to grant the Bank of England operational independence in 1997 was accompanied by a regulatory settlement that fragmented oversight of the financial system and placed great faith in the self-discipline of markets. In such an atmosphere the expansion of banks like Royal Bank of Scotland was not merely tolerated but actively encouraged.<\/p>\n

When the financial crisis arrived in 2008, the empire Goodwin had built collapsed with astonishing speed. Royal Bank of Scotland found itself on the brink of insolvency. The British government was forced to step in with a rescue package worth \u00a345bn, effectively nationalising the bank in order to prevent the financial system from imploding. The scale of the rescue was almost impossible to comprehend. In 2008, the British state effectively became the reluctant owner of one of the largest banks in the world. Yet, while the financial system was stabilised, a political reckoning was brewing. Millions of people watched as the government mobilised vast sums to rescue failing banks while the costs of the crisis were gradually shifted on to the taxpayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The consequences went far beyond the banking sector. The collapse of RBS and other banks cost the British economy \u00a32.4trn in terms of lost output over the ensuing 10 years, according to The Times<\/a>. This equated to \u00a388,000 per household. GDP shrank by 4.2 per cent in 2009 and unemployment peaked at 8.1 per cent in 2011. The British economy has spluttered along ever since.<\/p>\n

While Fred Goodwin walked away with an annual pension worth \u00a3703,000 when he left RBS<\/a>, the British people watched as the state rushed to rescue the very institutions that had helped trigger the crisis. The economic pain that followed fell largely on the public. Austerity, stagnant wages and collapsing faith in the country\u2019s political class followed close behind. It is difficult to understand the political upheavals of the past decade \u2013 from Brexit to the broader revolt against mainstream politics \u2013without first understanding the fury unleashed by the financial crash.<\/p>\n

Goodwin eventually bowed to public anger and agreed to take a reduced pension of \u00a3342,500 a year. He swapped the UK for a \u00a34m retreat in the French Riviera after his Edinburgh home was attacked. Yet, he still kept a \u00a32.8m lump sum and the \u00a32.6m bonus he received in his final year at RBS. Meanwhile, taxpayers were forced to pour \u00a345bn into rescuing an institution whose balance sheet and reputation he had helped to destroy.<\/p>\n

In the end, Fred Goodwin was less an aberration than a symptom of what Adam Smith, the founder of classical economics, had once described as \u201cthe disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful\u201d. He rose to prominence in an era that celebrated financial bravado and believed the market\u2019s winners must invariably be its wisest stewards. When the crash came, that illusion collapsed like a deck of cards. The resentment and distrust that followed would reshape British politics in ways few anticipated. If we want to understand how we ended up here, the story of Fred Goodwin is as good a place to start as any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who broke Britain?\u00a0Welcome to\u00a0The i Paper\u2019s\u00a0opinion series in which our range of experts tackle this question and identify…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[714,13,11,5987],"class_list":{"0":"post-17472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-banking","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-who-broke-britain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116435343320568964","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}