This week sees the start of the legal case in the High Court by investors in the Lloyds TSB over the acquisition of HBOS – opening submissions are on Wednesday and it’s scheduled to run through to March next year. Anyone can attend these hearings of course but I think it will take a very patient person to sit through all of it. I have submitted written evidence on behalf of the litigants (represented by Harcus Sinclair) but it seems I am unlikely to be called for cross-examination by the defence which is somewhat disappointing.
I cannot comment further for that reason, but the claim is in essence based on the allegation that relevant information was not disclosed in the prospectus that was issued at the time in 2008 when investors in Lloyds TSB approved the deal. Lloyds reject that the claim has a sound basis, but the cross examination of former directors Sir Victor Blank, Eric Daniels and Truett Tate should provide some excitement and will no doubt be assiduously reported upon by the press. The directors who signed off the prospectus are of course defendents in the litigation as well as the company.
This is a similar case to that of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) litigation which was recently settled before it got into court, which is the way these matters often end up. Sky News has reported that Harcus Sinclair have offered to settle the case but that has been rejected by Lloyds. As in the RBS case, legal costs on both sides will no doubt be enormous.
Lloyds Banking Group are also involved in claims over the activities of management in HBOS (particularly in the Reading branch) which has resulted in the conviction of several people for fraud. The FT Magazine ran a very good, and lengthy, article on this subject in their October 7th edition. In summary this was where people exploited the fact that businesses in financial difficulty, who were dependent on loans from the bank, via consultancy fees and other strategies extracted large sums of money or gained control of businesses from the original owners. Large numbers of business owners lost their companies and in some cases were forced into poverty as result. This disgraceful episode was very similar to the activities of the Global Restructuring Group at RBS which I covered in a previous article, but will not be raised in the current legal proceedings. Lloyds are compensating the people affected, at least to some extent.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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