Is it me or did the banks – the ones that put us in the mess of the recession – seem to come out rather unscathed after things all settled down?

If the government bailed them out with countless millions, shouldn’t they have to pay it back? It seems not.

Well I was pretty happy to see that they do sometimes get their comeuppance with a number of banks receiving record-breaking fines from UK financial watchdog the Financial Services Authority.

Successions of rule-breaking, including failures to separate client money from their own funds which puts the money at risk if the bank were to go bust, caused companies to be hit with huge fines.

JP Morgan Securities were hit with a record-breaking £33.3million fine last year, followed by Barclays Capital, Rowan Dartington and Close Investments this year, though they each received far smaller amounts.

If companies like this are risking their clients money like this maybe the clients should think about going elsewhere - regardless of how much the company's been fined!

Picture: Community Friend (Flickr)