Scottish Bank in American Court

Europeans often make fun of Americans’ litigious ways, but it turns out those ways can sometimes be useful: Cherie Blair, wife of Tony, will represent two British city councils in a class action lawsuit in American courts seeking hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation against the Royal Bank of Scotland, The Times of London reports. The two towns invested a combined $5.6 billion of their pension funds in the doomed RBS. The lawsuit is open to all European and US investors in RBS, and names the entire board of directors as defendants. The court papers filed in New York accuse former chief executive Fred Goodwin of "hubris" for his disastrous strategies and claim that the firm "falsely reassured" investors that the tanking bank was doing well when it was "effectively insolvent."