Treasures from the threads - Number fifty-five

To an article on the latest billion pound write-down of Irish debt by Lloyds bank in the Daily Telegraph, linked here, came the following:

bonnifer

Today 11:08 AM

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Yet more evidence of the unforgivable breach of their duties as directors by the then board of Lloyds TSB Bank plc. Formerly one of the highest dividend paying FTSE 100 srocks and a staple of UK pensions this company has failed its shareholders, its employees and its other stakeholders as a result of the egregious behavious of its directors. Surely there is scope for a private prosecution unde section 172 of the Companies Act 2006.

Gordon's crony Sir Victor Blank was asked to buy HBoS to save Gordon having to do so. This would have embarassed Gordon since all of the UK's problems would clearly have stemmed from two scottish banks, two scottish Prime Ministers and two scottish Chancellors of the Exchequer. Sir Victor's American CEO Eric Daniels and the bank's other directors both executive and non executive did not chose to follow their duty to promote the success of the company as required by law, despite the state of HB0S being no secret to any well informed person even at that time. Instead they chose follow Sir Victor into the Valley of Death. Death or Glory may have been an appropriate motto for the 17th Lancers but it has no place in Corporate Governance.

(Edited by author 1 hour ago)

For all this blog has had to say on the Lloyds Bank outrage enter Lloyds Hbos in the blog search bar, or just click on the same words on the label below!

Lloyds HBOS and secret 25.4 billion pounds

This blog has always maintained the Lloyds/HBOS arrangement was sure to end in disaster.

The main question now, with a huge rights issue dilemma facing investors, is from WHERE did the 25.4 billion used by Lloyds to repay, in January of this year ,the secret Bank of England loan revealed today by Mervyn King, COME .... Could it have been another, as yet undisclosed, secret Bank of England loan? Also worth asking:

How could Parliament have been kept in the dark about these huge taxpayer liabilities for a whole year????????

Why was this blog one of the few asking such questions at the time????????

Were not Lloyds shareholders defrauded by the Government???????????

When will the arrests begin?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

BNP Paribas Rights Issue

The Wall Street Journal, link, reports this evening:

What a difference six weeks makes.

Back in August, BNP Paribas said it wouldn't repay the French government's €5.1 billion ($8.1 billion) stake in the bank until at least early 2010. Now it is launching a €4.3 billion rights issue to do just that -- in the process leapfrogging a clutch of other European banks, including Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, mulling similar efforts to repay government aid, and Unicredit, which announced a rights issue later Tuesday.

Watch for developments in the Lloyds HBOS and RBS Asset Protection Scheme saga as the next stage of the credit crunch looks set to hit removing the world from the relative calm of the phony recession.

Read John Redwood on Quantitative Easing from here.

Returning value to money is the only cure, everything attempted over the past 25 months has been working in exactly the wrong direction.

Britain's one-man opposition?

William Rees-Mogg this morning heads his online Times column, linked here, "Brown cannot shirk the blame for Lloyds". Well in a sane world maybe not, but with one opposition party led by Camerloon and the still smaller one by a 'man?' more concerned with nappy changing than the fate of the country it looks as though Brown may well get away 'scot' free once more.

Some quotes from the venerable gent's column, so obvious it should hardly need saying:

Three people share the main responsibility for this financial disaster: the chairman of Lloyds Bank, Sir Victor Blank, the chief executive, Eric Daniels, and the Prime Minister Gordon Brown. One would naturally expect Sir Victor and Mr Daniels to resign their posts. Whether or not the purchase of HBOS eventually proves profitable, the immediate consequences have been catastrophic....

It is the Prime Minister's position that is hardest to justify. He played a vital part in the negotiation of Lloyds purchase of HBOS and in the Government's negotiation of the asset guarantees. In mid-September 2008, at the same time as the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Sir Victor met Gordon Brown at a reception at Spencer House in London....

The article concludes....On his visit to the United States, he is reported to have suffered a spasm of anger or anxiety in front of some British journalists. “You want me to go on television and apologise, but I am not going to do it. I have nothing to apologise for. It is not my fault. Get in the real world.” In the real world, the disaster that has befallen Lloyds Bank is Gordon Brown's fault and his responsibility.

Read it all and demand Gordon Brown resign, can you really go on pretending none of this will really impact YOU?... Yes YOU!!!

Warnings for Brown on his Lloyds Destruction

Brown leaked it via Robert Peston of the BBC on 17th September 2008 linked here.

On 18th September among many other criticisms this blog stated, (linked here):

If the problem is mistrust by bankers of one another, absorbtion of one bank by another will surely merely shift the target of others mistrust....

On 13th October, I blogged twice on the topic (here and here), among my comments were the following:

Of course one cannot really say that a deal is continuing when the price has been re-negotiated downwards by 27 per cent but the join-up of the banks seems to be continuing condemning LLoyds not only to nationalisation but almost certain death!
+++++

The only other bank presently involved seems to be Lloyds TSB which was
perfectly viable before they became entwined in the machinations of the demented Gordon Brown - now presumably the Lloyds shareholders are to be punished/sacrificed for having doubts on the originally hastily cobbled together deal.

British taxpayers can neither afford nor pay for this deal which does not direct a single penny towards the source of the problem - the exploded house price bubble......

Things just get stranger and stranger - Where is the Parliamentary Opposition?

On 20th October under the heading "Battle for Britain's Banks" (linked here) my post included these thoughts:

Last week the Marx inspired British Government declared war on Britain's Banks....

Lloyds and HBOS issues look set to become a side-show this week, although it is disturbing to see Legal and General recommend the merger, Lloyds shareholders should make their own calculations, large finance companies may easily be swayed by their holdings in HBOS when casting their votes a shareholders of Lloyds!

The taxpayers can merely look on in horror and trust that all these deals may yet collapse before a single penny of the billions of taxpayers funds pledged, which can never be realistically raised let alone repaid, are actually legally committed let alone begun to be transferred. (Link on latest borrowing added at 11:30 am, here).

On 22nd November was this afterthought to a post linked here:

Worrying for annuity holders with Legal and General (such as myself) which insurer supported the HBOS takeover and yesterday approved the dilution of their Barclay's equity value - have they really thought all this through?

On 13th December (link here) I despaired:

The Guardian reports the meeting where the castrated shareholders of HBOS went along with those of Lloyds in agreeing the merger of the two banks which the mazed mainstream media insist on predicting will be a "Superbank" but in fact will result in years of debts for Britain's bankrupt mainly non-voting electorate and the nation's future taxpaying generation.

Starting the New Year of 2009 on Monday January 5th (link here) I blogged:

HBOS Pensioners fear for the future

The insane merger of Lloyds with HBOS forced through by the increasingly demented British Prime Minister has hit another snag as HBOS Final Salary Pension Scheme Trustees go to Court a week from today to obtain some guarantees for their future, report here.

Thus on the proper first working day of the New Year one of the PM's many demented projects, dubbed by his media apologists as a "Super Bank" we see the shares in the companies involved plunging even below their levels of last year.

AND SO IT CONTINUED WITH 5 MORE BLOGS IN JANUARY AND 7 IN FEBRUARY ON AND ON AND ON UNTIL TODAY'S LONG PREDICTED NEWS.

Lloyds! Do any in England now believe they live in a Democracy

The Independent this morning, linked here, reports that a trillion dollars worth of foreign funds were withdrawn from the City of London between the spring and the end of of last year and that the run could now become a rout of confidence. It also has the following:

This week, Lloyds became the latest bank to approach the Government for more assistance. A deal was agreed last night for the Government to insure about £260bn of assets in return for a stake of up to 75 per cent in the bank. The slide in sterling – it has shed a quarter of its value since mid-2007 – has been both cause and effect of the run on London, seemingly becoming a self-fulfilling phenomenon. The danger is that the heavy depreciation of the pound could become a rout if confidence completely evaporates.

Why has this act of destruction against a viable bank been perpetrated by the Government with no calling to account. On 18th September last year, when the merger was first leaked I blogged (here) as follows:

If the problem is mistrust by bankers of one another, absorbtion of one bank by another will surely merely shift the target of others mistrust....

If the takeover of Abbey National by Lloyds a while back was halted as not in the public interest how come the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds is justified in the public interest?...

Re-establishing trust in Scotland would surely be best attained by separating the old Bank of Scotland from the Halifax disaster area...

Now it is being announced on the BBC that Lloyds has become a government subsidiary. The shareholders have had their assets effectively stolen, although foolishly all along the way they kowtowed to the Government's demands, but under what pressure by the Government upon the larger institutional investors who alone could have swung the act of plunder!

Can higher prescription charges only be applied in one part of a Democracy? Can the Government steal your bank? The answer to both questions should be No. Yet it is happening.... Can England still be a democracy?? How can the answer possibly be Yes even had legislative power not been passed to the EU?

Why has the Opposition throughout this period not Opposed?

(Update 0921 GMT the Government stake in Lloyds is now reported by Sky as 77%, another 2% loss over breakfast for the shareholders since The Independent went to press. What a Farce!)

(Update at midday - at least one other commentator agrees on this, read here but Gerald Warner in his Telegraph blog is forced to ask in the title "Is it just me?" Just us it seems - unbelievably the Conservative Home blog is debating as its main topic whether the Tories are still right wing!!)