We are including this guy in our list of financial villains because of his insatiable appetite for profitless growth and excessive risk which ultimately led to one of the biggest failures in the European Banking industries

For years, the worst moniker you heard thrown at Goodwin, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), was "Fred the Shred," on account of his knack for paring costs and throwing the resulting staff casualties to the lions. A slew of acquisitions changed that, and some RBS investors saw him as a megalomaniac, and more accurate they could not have been. Commentators have since suggested that Goodwin is simply "the world's worst banker."

He typifies the face of over-reaching bankers everywhere, Goodwin got greedy. More than 20 takeovers helped him transform RBS into a world beater after he assumed control in 2000. But he couldn't stop there. As the gloom gathered in 2007, Goodwin couldn't resist leading a $100 billion takeover of Dutch rival ABN Amro, stretching RBS's capital reserves to the limit. The result: the British government last fall pumped $30 billion into the bank, which expects 2008 losses to be the biggest in U.K. corporate history.

How to take a good business and destroy it ... Just add ego and largess Our European friends will love the Smash me Freddy - destroy him as he did RBS.