ALEX BRUMMER: Bank Calls in Big Gun Ben Bernanke

As the Bank of England’s supervisory board, the Court has been barely visible during a torrid period for Governor Andrew Bailey and his team as they grossly misjudged the seriousness of the inflationary threat.

Despite employing a phalanx of economists (too many work from home), Bailey and chief economist Huw Pill acknowledged that the bank’s forecasting model failed last November when it predicted the longest recession in British history.

We’re still waiting. But if the Monetary Policy Committee continues to push interest rates up, it may get its wish.

No one will be impressed that in choosing Ben Bernanke to judge the bank’s forecasting performance, the presiding judge, David Roberts, has recruited the best, the most experienced and brightest.

As two-time Federal Reserve Chairman, Bernanke guided the US through the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 and its aftermath. He comes with great references.

He is much more than that. As an academic economist at the great Nobel Prize factory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bernanke wrote a definitive work on the Great Depression of the 1930s and also collected his own Nobel Prize.

The choice is a big cut from bringing in the usual suspects from one of the big accounting firms or even the London School of Economics.

Speed ​​is the essence and the court promises a report next spring.

Better late than never. The Court should be applauded for getting great.

Brass neck

Howard Davies should have been just the person needed at the helm in a crisis.

When it came to pushing NatWest, he was nowhere to be seen. He made the wrong choice on Tuesday, after it became clear that the position of former CEO Dame Alison Rose was untenable, causing an embarrassing U-turn. Now he insists he can stay despite making a mess.

If, as chairman, he had been as attentive to what was happening at Coutts and the CEO’s social interactions with journalists as he was to visiting broadcast studios to speak out on interest rates, the group’s reputation might not have improved. went through Fred Goodwin’s paper shredder again.

With delay, the bank now enlists law firm Travers Smith to investigate.

The internal review Rose asked for would never be up to the mark.

Independent investigation was always required and NatWest must commit to publishing the full report.

The risk when the big law is called in is that it plows the field by providing testimony that, due to privilege, hinders the work of the Financial Conduct Authority.

It would be a shame if Rose’s banking legacy was lost in the backwash. Woke may have triumphed over customer service, but a bank that has struggled to find its way since the financial crisis recovers.

Pre-tax profit in the second quarter was higher than forecast at £1.8bn, fears of bad credit appear overblown, with a modest £153m set aside, and there’s a £500m buyback that puts a minor dent in the Government interest of 38.6 percent.

Before we all start staring at NatWest’s results, it should be remembered that this comes at the expense of customers.

Its interest margin of 3.2 percent (down to 3.15 percent for the full year) stems from the poor returns it offers savers while charging borrowers higher rates.

The next permanent boss would do well to smarten up the shabby customer service and understand that closing branches destroys the social fabric that binds communities together.

Life Guardian

Big pharma is doing well, as the latest figures from AstraZeneca, the largest stock in the FTSE 100, show.

Chief executive Pascal Soriot couldn’t be faulted for a little gloating about how Astra is now more valuable than its 2014 stalker, Pfizer.

Aiming to be a global leader in gene therapy, it is spending £775 million to buy Pfizer’s portfolio in this area to complement its Alexion unit bought for £28.7 billion in 2021.

Astra revealed it has another blockbuster on the books in the Type 2 diabetes, kidney disease and heart compound Farxiga. It became a bestseller in the last quarter, with sales up 41 percent.

On the right track!