What The Hell Have You Got Yourself into Robert Peston???

The Observer reports today that the Serious Fraud Office is considering launching an inquiry into credit crunch hero and BBC business editor Robert Peston, after Tory MP Greg Hands wrote to them complaining about Peston’s super banking ’scoops’. Hands postulates that Peston’s source/s is a Downing Street mole, and he could be being used for an elaborate insider trading sting, whose perpetrators buy stocks minutes before Robert Peston’s BBC reports go to air, and profit from consequent market swings:

“Hands cites how on 17 September Peston revealed for the first time that HBOS and Lloyds TSB banks were in secret takeover talks. The government brokered the rescue deal in secret talks between the two banks, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority… ‘In the minutes before this news was disseminated,’ Hands states in his letter, ‘it now seems that buyers purchased more than 20 million HBOS shares at prices around 96p each, leading to a significant profit as the share price increased to 215p in the hour following the revelation.’ He quotes Keith Skeoch, chief executive of Standard Life Investments, as having said: ‘Someone was in possession of information and that information was leaked, which caused a movement in HBOS’s share price.’”

Um, Jesus wept Robert, what the hell have you got yourself into? If you do the maths that would be about £23.8 million profit in under one hour.

Bad juju relating to Peston and his possible acquaintances has been circulating for the last couple of weeks, with David Parsley, former editor of freesheet financial rag City AM, branding him a bank industry pawn in the Sunday Express:

“…his sources among the banks and those who are supposed to regulate the City are using the BBC to put the fear of God into politician, the markets and the public in order to achieve their goals.

“Peston’s revelations, which have made him the most powerful journalist in Britain today, have led directly to this taxpayer’s rescue of the banking system and that’s what the bank bosses wanted.”

But this insider trading allegation takes the Peston-mumurs to a whole new level. While Peston is so far not implicated in the scandal as a beneficiary, being the pawn in an ellaborate insider-trading-via-news-manipulation scandal is a bit of a career dampener. It would be a shame to see Peston gagged/fired/intimidated/put on a leash, as I/we at BAD IDEA still think Peston’s blog is one of the most well informed (hmm) and clearly articulated on the UK financial landscape. Hope you pull through dude…

Posted by Becky North in Hot Money | October 19, 2008 6:35PM |