Scotland's papers: Bank boss jailed and Salmond 'private eye' claims

This is a low-direct-P&L headline, but it matters for the governance complex because legal outcomes tend to reprice not just the named individuals but the institutional perimeter around them. The first-order trade is reputational, but the second-order effect is tighter scrutiny on boards, campaign-adjacent media ecosystems, and any entity with concentrated decision-making or weak oversight. In practice, that raises the discount rate for political-media assets and increases the probability of short-lived volatility spikes around trial dates, appeals, and document disclosures.

The more interesting angle is duration: these stories often look binary intraday but become a slow burn over weeks as new details leak and counterparties reassess exposure. If allegations involve investigators, advisers, or media intermediaries, the market tends to punish the weakest links rather than the principals — small publishers, local broadcasters, and services firms with outsized dependence on government-facing relationships can see order-flow hesitation before revenue impact shows up. The catalyst path is therefore asymmetric: limited upside on exoneration, but recurring downside if the narrative reactivates with fresh testimony or procedural rulings.

Contrarian take: the market usually overestimates the permanence of political scandal and underestimates institutional fatigue. Unless the case broadens materially, the economic impact should remain localized and mean-reverting, which argues against chasing broad de-risking. The better setup is to fade any knee-jerk move in sentiment-sensitive media names after headline spikes, while staying alert for a longer-duration governance rerating in organizations with weak internal controls or obvious key-person concentration.