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Shredded reputation of 'King of Scotland'
Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter26 Feb 2009
FORMER RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin has enjoyed - and latterly endured - a variety of nicknames and epithets over the years, charting precisely his rise and fall from grace.
Best known as Fred "the Shred" for wiping out layers of management at NatWest and other banks, it is his own reputation that has now been shredded.
He was being hailed even as recently as October 2007 as "King Fred of Scotland" by the Sunday Times for creating a global bank out of Royal Bank of Scotland, a Scottish institution but barely a player on the world stage.
A little more than 12 months later he was being branded the world's worst banker by Newsweek.
Sir Fred's is a classic story of corporate greed followed by hubris - the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who made an awful lot of money but always wanted more. Frederick Anderson Goodwin was born in 1958 in Paisley, growing up on the Ferguslie Park estate, one of the most socially deprived in Europe.
His father, also Fred, has been described as a "socially ambitious" engineer - other reports call him an electrician - who earned sufficient money to take his family out of the estate and into a semi.
A bright, hard-working lad, Fred attended Paisley Grammar School before studying law at Glasgow University - the first member of his family to attend university. He landed his first job as a chartered accountant with Touche Ross, making partner at the age of 29. From there, he joined the Clydesdale Bank as deputy chief executive before being poached by Sir George Mathewson, then RBS's chief executive, a decade ago.
Sir George is said to have seen something of himself in the young banker. By 2001, after the takeover of NatWest, an English bank more than twice its size, Sir Fred was made chief executive and three years later knighted for his services to banking, having formed close ties with Gordon Brown.
He built a gleaming HQ for his new, global bank in Edinburgh and set about putting the RBS logo on everything from golf stars such as Jack Nicklaus to motor racing's Sir Jackie Stewart, as well as offering lucrative sponsorship deals to the likes of Andy Murray. Sir Fred is both a golfing and motorsports fanatic. His other great passion is shooting.
He was married in 1990 and has two children with wife Joyce. They live in a Victorian villa in Edinburgh, where he is said to spend much of his spare time tinkering with his classic sports cars.
It's a far cry from life on the estate in Paisley. Not that anybody is applauding his rise from slumdog to millionaire any longer.
Reader views (1)
I've just realized. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were here with us all the time !
They were in 'Cabinet' working for the bankers.
- David Hill, bern, 27/02/2009 00:01
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