[branchless]

Pure math to head of QR risk management over the period when RBS took on insane leverage and relied on wholesale lending markets staying at low rates forever. An assumption that was incorrect and led to RBS being bailed out by UK tax-payers.

Good work fella.

[shamney]

head of quantitative research = spending all your time on pricing models for complex derivatives. it's unlikely he had anything to do with RBS's overall financial strategy

[branchless]

Head of modelling risk for RBS. Maybe some of it was derivatives. Some of it should have been modelling the cost of borrowing money on wholesale markets. The RBS strategy was leverage to the hilt, borrow short, lend long. Lunacy.

[cma]

Maybe he thought it was a bad srategy until he calculated in the likelihood of tax-payer bailout if things went wrong.

[dreamweapon]

But hey, it must have been a fun, taxpayer-subsidized ride. Or as a certain person in the industry once famously said: "As long as the music's playing, you've got to get up and dance", right?

[walshemj]

should have paid more attention to the machines in the dinosaur pen :-)

For non uk peeps a while back RBS had major screw up on the mainframe side that meant that some people where not able to access their bank account for days weeks for one of the NI subsidiary's