If Jeff Skilling of Enron fame can be serving 24 years 4 months in jail (and a decent sized fine of $45 million for good measure), all because he misled investors, then quite why our UK banksters couldn’t be pursued on similar grounds is completely beyond us…?
The scandals of RBS, Northern Rock, HBOS & Bradford & Bingley (the latter 2 being particularly acute for shareholders who wound up with nothing following a rigged valuation methodology) where the Directors of the failed/ailing banks seemed to simply walk off into the sunset with hefty pay packets and we are all left to pick up the pieces is a rotten stain on the already credited canvas that is modern day UK corporate culture.
Gordon Brown’s recent testimony at the Leveson inquiry in which he seemed to have, at best, a ‘lapse of memory’ or at worst, simply showed himself to the world to be the self delusional fantasist unwilling to accept he is wrong on anything that we all felt he was, is ammunition indeed for those Northern Rock and B&B shareholders (many impoverished pensioners) that they were simply hung out to dry by the politicians and self serving banksters in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis. A crisis that many people are still feeling the after effects of – including the equity markets.
I was pleased to see in todays press that somewhat belatedly some of the banksters number are indeed being pursued – if only in a civil suit – on the basis of misleading investors. oith Goodwin and his band of merry men, sorry, fellow RBS Directors and also in the B&B case Kent and Crawshaw.
We’ll be watching with interest developments here. The focus in both cases seems to be on the rights issue prospectuses. Somebody is culpable with regards to raising vast sums of money in full knowledge that the assets they were being raised against were not what they were purporting them to be. To be allowed to, in effect, mislead investors leaving them holding the baby and then walk off with relative impunity (save for a Knighthood being stripped from on of their crew!) somewhat leaves bad taste in my mouths.
In a similar vein, this Fridays Plus Markets AGM will hopefully, in a small way, result in a victory for shareholders as another set of manglement that failed miserably their shareholders are shown the door and their ‘termination’ payments being withheld. A stand for what is right, fair and moral must be made and we hope to report good news in this regard on Friday