‘World’s Worst Banker’ Loses British Royal Honor–Like Mussolini

15 january 2013

He didn’t go to jail.  But Fred Goodwin, whose reign running the Royal Bank of Scotland resulted in the world’s biggest-ever bank bailout in 2008,  received the ultimate insult today. The British Government stripped him of the knighthood he was given in 2004.

Goodwin had brought the honors system into disrepute,” the Cabinet Office said in a statement. “The scale and severity of the impact of his actions as CEO of RBS made this an exceptional case.”

Goodwin,  who was dubbed the “world’s worst banker” after the UK coughed up $71 billion to take over the 285-year-old institution, now finds himself in some infamous company. Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, Nazi traitor Vidkun Quisling of Norway, thugish  Zimbabwe Prime Minister Robert Mugabe–they all had British honors revoked, too.  For more examples of how English judgment can sometimes fall a little short, click here.

In the case of Goodwin, he was knighted for “undertaking many projects to the benefit of his bank and the good of Scotland as a whole,” Prime Minister Tony Blair said at the time. Then Goodwin, an accountant by training, led the institution into a number of disastrous acquisitions. By far the worst was the $94 billion purchase–with borrowed money–of ABN Amro Holdings NV of the Netherlands in 2008 as the credit crisis was about to explode.