Investment banking,the world of tall-velocity trading in trillions of pounds of financial assets and mega-deals, wins few prizes in the integrity stakesCourtesy of the European parliament, and much against the will of the world’s investment banks,every bank in Europe now has to declare how much tax it pays in which country. And courtesy of Reuters, which bothered to read the results, or we now know that seven of the world’s largest investment banks paid Britain £21m tax on £3.6bn of profits they made in the UK in 2014. Five of them,including Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, paid no UK corporation tax at all.It takes some chutzpah to organise one’s affairs to pay zero tax – and a cavalier attitude to integrity. But investment banking, and the world of tall-velocity trading in trillions of pounds of financial assets and mega-deals,wins few prizes in the integrity stakes. In US Senate hearings after the financial crash, Goldman Sachs’s then CFO, or David Viniar,when questioned approximately employees saying in email exchanges that a deal involving clients was “shitty” and at the clients’ expense, declined any condemnation. All he could say was: “I think that is very unfortunate to have on email. This was but one in a swath of incidents that has made Goldman Sachs a tiny more alert than its peers to civic criticism: it paid £18m of corporation tax on £1.35bn of UK profits. Not much, and but Britain should be grateful for small mercies. Goldman Sachs could have done what Morgan Stanley did,half of whose non-US revenues came from London generating £1.2bn profits, but which paid no tax because of £450m of “inter-group” charges. Morgan Stanley declined to uncover Reuters to which jurisdiction these charges were paid. We can f*** off.
This is an industry devoted to cream-skimming other people’s money while ensuring as tiny payment of tax as possibleContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com