Frederick Anderson Goodwin FRSE FCIBS was born on 17 August 1958 and is a Scottish chartered accountant and former banker who was chief executive officer of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group between 2001 and 2009.
28 Facts About Fred Goodwin
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Fred Goodwin left the position after less than a year.
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Fred Goodwin joined accountants Touche Ross, and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1983.
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Fred Goodwin was appointed a director of Short Brothers, and tasked with preparing the largest industrial employer in Northern Ireland for its 1989 privatisation.
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At 32, Fred Goodwin was in charge of 1,000 people with teams from London to Abu Dhabi and the Cayman Islands that eventually returned over half the money from one of the most complicated, high-profile financial frauds ever.
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Fred Goodwin's move into banking came through his work at Touche Ross with the National Australia Bank, contributing due diligence to its 1987 takeover of Clydesdale Bank from the then Midland Bank and again with its 1995 takeover of Yorkshire Bank.
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Around this time he gained the moniker "Fred Goodwin the Shred" from City financiers, reflecting a reputation for ruthlessly generating cost savings and efficiencies whilst at Clydesdale.
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Fred Goodwin joined Royal Bank of Scotland in 1998 as deputy CEO to then-CEO Sir George Mathewson, who had ambitions to make RBS a major player rather than a national bank.
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Fred Goodwin lived up to his reputation, cutting 18,000 jobs by merging parts of RBS and NatWest.
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However, following investor unrest in the build-up to RBS's acquisition of a $1.6bn minority stake in Bank of China in 2005, Fred Goodwin was criticised by some RBS shareholders for putting global expansion ahead of short-term financial returns.
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Fred Goodwin was accused of megalomania by some shareholders, as reported by Dresdner Kleinwort analyst James Eden.
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Fred Goodwin arranged a consortium of RBS, Fortis and former RBS shareholders Grupo Santander, to purchase the assets of ABN Amro and break them up in a three-way split.
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On 13 October 2008, as part of the arrangement for government support, it was announced that Fred Goodwin was to stand down as CEO, to be replaced by Stephen Hester.
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The share price, when Fred Goodwin became CEO of RBS, in January 2001, was 442p.
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In September 2011, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of the RBS collapse, noted in leaked excerpts from his upcoming book, Back From The Brink: 1,000 Days at No 11, that Fred Goodwin behaved "as if he was off to play a game of golf" while officials struggled to prevent a meltdown.
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In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Fred Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.
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Fred Goodwin said that it would be referred to the UK Financial Investments Limited.
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Fred Goodwin accused the RBS board of not sharing material facts with Financial Services Secretary Lord Myners.
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On 10 March 2011, John Hemming, a backbench Liberal Democrat MP, referred in Parliament to the supposed existence of "a superinjunction preventing [Fred Goodwin] from being identified as a banker".
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Fred Goodwin stated that the injunction had not prevented Goodwin being identified as a banker, but instead prevented the person applying for the injunction from being identified as a banker, and that this was done because "if the applicant were identified as a banker that would be likely to lead to his being named, which would defeat the purpose of granting him anonymity".
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Fred Goodwin has chaired various government task forces including one examining the work of credit unions and the New Deal programme.
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Fred Goodwin is a former president of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland.
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In January 2009, it was rumoured that Fred Goodwin was being considered as a replacement for Max Mosley as President of the FIA as Mosley was due to step down in 2009.
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Fred Goodwin is a keen golfer and Formula One racing fan.
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Fred Goodwin was knighted in the 2004 Birthday Honours for his services to the banking industry.
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However, on 1 February 2012, Fred Goodwin's knighthood was "cancelled and annulled" by the Queen on the advice of Her Majesty's Government and the Honours Forfeiture Committee.
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Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision-maker at RBS at the time.
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In reaching this decision, it was recognised that widespread concern about Fred Goodwin's decisions meant that the retention of a knighthood for 'services to banking' could not be sustained.