Sircumcision: unceremonious removal of knighthood

The Queen, who turned Sir Fred Goodwin, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland, into plain Mr Fred Goodwin this week by stripping him of his knighthood, sent a clear signal to the rest of the disgraced bankers that the possibility of losing the honour was no longer the stuff for idle speculation, if the service that they claimed to have rendered to the banking sector, turned out to be a disservice in the long run.

With the unprecedented move, a new English term came into existence in the literary circles to sum up the humiliating process, with the intense focus on the very title which is at risk of losing – Sircumcision. In short, Sir Fred Goodwin has been sircumcised – and pretty unceremoniously. As a result, Mr Goodwin has been forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, who had been subjected to a similar ‘cut’, but in wholly different circumstances.

Judging by the growing anger against the bankers among the British people and the momentum that is being built for not letting them go scot-free, it is obvious that Mr Goodwin is not the only banker who is on the radar of the forfeiture committee - the group of top civil servants who are determined to see that the wrong-doers do not go unpunished.

Mr Fred Goodwin, Glasgow born chartered accountant, was a flamboyant character among the global banking elite in his heyday, who turned the Royal Bank of Scotland into one of the top five global banks in a relatively short time. He became its chief executive at the age of 42 and then went on an enviable acquisition spree by bagging Natwest, Coutts, Adam & Co, Direct Line, Ulster Bank, Churchill and Citizens Bank in the US, with the full blessings of the political establishment.

At one point, the RBS even had a vast balance sheet of investments and loans worth more than the annual GDP of the United Kingdom – while briefly occupying the slot of world’s top bank.

He seemed unstoppable until the whiff of the Credit Crunch started making its way across the Atlantic. The combination of his disastrous move to acquire the over-priced Dutch bank, ABN Amro and the ill-judged investments made in the US subprime loans, took its toll on the RBS within a period of one year and by the end of 2008, the banking giant - a star performer a year ago - was almost on the verge of collapse.

The British taxpayers were forced to cough up a vast sum of money to the tune of $90 billion to save the bank. Mr Fred Goodwin effortlessly taught the ambitious bankers the gut-wrenching stages of little-known metamorphosis of hero-to-zero.

Even before the British Establishment conferred the honour of knighthood on Mr Goodwin, the staff – and their dependents – had bestowed a different title on him which was inextricable linked to the nature of the job that he was doing as the CEO of the bank. They called him Fred-the-Shred, in order to highlight what he was really good at: ruthlessly axing thousands of jobs and cutting down on costs to appease the shareholders.

The reaction - immediate or otherwise - of Mr Goodwin to the loss of title is not known. Mr Goodwin, who managed to earn the wrath of the British public by claiming a pension of almost 1$ million, a year at the age of 50 - after leaving the bank that he once headed at the mercy of a public bail-out - may have been hurt by the decision made by the Her Majesty.

It is not trivial to be addressed as Mr Goodwin, the Golf-loving former banker, by the very people who used to call him Sir Fred, especially, at places like prestigious St Andrews in Scotland, the Home of Golf. So, the threat of Sircumcision has the potential to stop honour-loving bankers from taking endless risks in pursuit of hefty bonuses.

- Asian Tribune –

Tweet