BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Tizer]

`HSBC to pay $101.5m to settle currency rigging probe'
HSBC has agreed to pay $101.1m (£72.7m) to settle a US criminal investigation into rigged currency transactions. The bank has admitted its traders twice misused confidential information provided to them by clients for its own profit. HSBC, which is Europe's biggest bank, saw one of its former bankers convicted last year in connection with the probe. A US jury found Mark Johnson guilty of defrauding client Cairn Energy in a 2011 currency trade. The HSBC settlement is made up of a $63.1m criminal penalty and $38.4m in restitution to an unnamed corporate client. Separately it had already settled with Cairn Energy for approximately $8m. As part of the US deal, HSBC has entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the US Department of Justice. The DPA, which would allow HSBC to avoid criminal charges, is pending a review by a US court.

[Stanley]

I saw that as well Tiz. Worth asking the question why so many cases like this aren't the subject of prosecution by the UK courts.... Could it be that the miscreants know they have the chance of a plea bargain over there?

[Stanley]

See THIS for an overview of the problems that seem to be appearing over Barclay's decision to make the pension fund the responsibility of the volatile casino section, the separate investment bank and not the more stable retail division in which 90% of the potential beneficiaries of the fund work. It's an interesting question and of course being a suspicious bugger I smell a Cunning Wheeze!

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report on the news that Lloyd's Bank and its associated institutions have banned the use of credit cards to buy Bitcoins or any other form of crypto currency. They are worried about being liable for large sums when customers lose money and claim the bank is responsible for making up the loss under the credit card rules. It seems this has been triggered by the reports of fraud and fluctuations in the sale and value of the crypto currency.

[Tizer]

Two things strike me about this announcement. First, does it also imply (by analogy) that if I bought some gold with a Lloyds credit card and then the price plummeted I would be able to hold the bank responsible for making up my loss? No, I don't think it would. So the second thing to strike me is that the real reason for this move is that Lloyds (and other banks) don't want us to believe that anyone but the banks can deal with our money and investment. The banks have already started to look at their own versions of `cryptocurrencies' and they don't want any smart alec techie types spoiling their plans.

[Stanley]

I am sure you are right Tiz. They usually have a secret agenda.

[Stanley]

Talking about secret agendas..... Frank Fields, as chairman of the Parliamentary Pensions select committee has a query for Carillion. They hold several separate pension funds, the legacy of takeovers and the deficits of several of them add up to £811Million but one has a small surplus of £6million. The one with the surplus is the fund that pays the director's pensions. Frank wants to know why.......

[Tizer]

This has been rumbling on for years but the SFO has just raised it to a new level which could have serious effects on the ability of Barclays to carry on its business.
`Barclays Bank charged over Qatar loans' LINK

[Stanley]

How did they think that lending money to itself could get under the radar? Some wheezes are less cunning than others.....

[Tizer]

I think it's due to the shocking arrogance of bankers who've always been allowed to get away with their scams and bad treatment of customers. Besides this high profile Barclays case the same company has had a big problem with its personal investment service for nearly a year and hasn't sorted it yet. It moved all its investment customers onto another `platform' but it isn't working properly and the customers haven't been able to access their accounts. Many have been locked out since the problem began and, not surprisingly, they're furious. They missed out on buying when the stock market was high last year and now aren't able to sell stock when the market is falling. They can't shift to another provider because they can't get access to their accounts. The Barclays response seems to be simply "Oh dear. what a shame".
----------------------------------------------

Here's a different story...
`Firms on Caribbean island chain own 23,000 UK properties' LINK
"A quarter of property in England and Wales owned by overseas firms is held by entities registered in the British Virgin Islands, BBC analysis has found. The Caribbean archipelago is the official home of companies that own 23,000 properties - more than any other country. They are owned by 11,700 firms registered in the overseas territory. The finding emerged from BBC analysis conducted of Land Registry data on overseas property ownership. The research found there are around 97,000 properties in England and Wales held by overseas firms, as of January 2018. It adds to concerns that companies registered in British-controlled tax havens have been used to avoid tax..."

[Stanley]

'Lords of the Universe' Tiz, they can do no wrong because they set the weather!
I heard the report on off-shore ownership and It's no surprise the anyone who has read the research done by Private Eye on that and 'Brass Plate' LLPs as well. See LINK, This initiative was an influential factor in reversing the policy to privatise the Land Registry and stop public access to the Register. We are already one of the go-to destinations for money laundering and if the City and Brexiteers have their way we shall expand this role as a source of income. T May openly threatened as much in the early days of the '
negotiations' when she was in her 'Bloody-minded woman' mode. She has gone remarkably quiet on that front.

[plaques]

From the above Link. It may be just a coincidence that this area of land in Colne identified as 'foreign' owned and now subject to a much contested planning application for hundreds of houses happened to have been bought prior to Pendle Core Strategy plan which we now all know is a 'build anywhere you wish' licence.

Colne Map.JPG

Conspiracy theories abound. This could be simply a well researched purchase by a foreign company or an attempt to minimize tax liabilities. Still a bit strange how the biggest lump of land in Colne drops into grey area.

[chinatyke]

I think it was owned by a Councillor when I lived across from this land 60 years ago. I forget his name but his son was called Tony! May have been Tony Greaves. It's an ideal "fill in" area.

[Stanley]

Or a developer using an off-shore source of finance to evade tax?

[Stanley]

See THIS report about the new head of the FCA having to admit that he used what turned out to be an illegal tax avoidance scheme. PE flagged this up weeks ago, perhaps someone has read their report! Who guards the custodians?

[Tizer]

The FCA are the focus of lots of criticism now. Put simply, they are not fit for purpose.

[Stanley]

They and the FSA have always been the target of ridicule in PE....
See THIS Guardian report on Lloyd's Bank Group profits. Parlous financial times aren't bad for everybody! How can anyone be worth a £6.4million handout?

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report of the RBS profit. So that's all right then......

[Stanley]

See THIS report on the fact that Richard Adams, a retiring Carrilion Finance Director dumped his shares just before the KPMG issued the report on finances that led to the collapse. On the face of it all perfectly legal but he was in a position to know what was happening before his retirement. This is the suspicion that the Parliamentary Committee is looking at. Handy!

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report on the latest evidence about the Carillion collapse to emerge as it is investigated. Clear evidence that it was being 'aggressively managed' to improve the balance sheet using tactics that were, if not illegal, grossly unfair and unethical. Their 'auditors' were being paid millions of pounds for their services, there is something rotten about this system and it is high time the matter was seriously addressed.

[Tizer]

As well as all the serious misleading statements made by Carillion bosses and the financial shenanigans the issue in this sentence in the BBC report deserves more attention from the government:
`To help with cashflow, Carillion quadrupled payment terms on its subcontractors from 30 days to four months.'
This has bankrupted some of the subcontractors and made life very difficult for the rest. The government has allowed companies to make such extensions regardless of the effects on suppliers.

A sad side note here is that the public seems apathetic about all the mismanagement in big organisations and seems willing to allow themselves to be stuffed by the company bosses and to let the government get away with its role in the shambolic state of the nation. [Rant over! ]

[Stanley]

Don't stop ranting Tiz. I remember the days in the late 1970s when Courtaulds demanded 14 day payments from us for yarn and had a three month policy in respect of their payments to us for cloth. Exactly the same syndrome and ask yourself what happened to them!
Occasionally you will hear lone voices calling for a mandatory monthly accounting period and automatic punitive interest payments on outstanding debts by law. They always sink without trace under the weight of the big business lobby. As I keep saying, the system of financial oversight and regulation is rotten to the core and is dominated by the major financial interests. Let's start with the SPADS seconded to the government free by the big interests......
Can you remember the US senator who said that the Credit Crunch in 2008 was a coup d'etat perpetrated by the big commercial banks, Morgan Stanley in particular? They had 'advisers' at every level in the US treasury.....

[Stanley]

I was surprised to hear yesterday that Legal and General are major players in the market of buying company's pension funds and managing them for profit. It could be that the management will be better but I think I would be disturbed if I heard this had happened to my pension fund. Not likely because it is with one of the biggest insurance companies in the UK.

[Tizer]

The bosses at Deutsche Bank are going to get massive bonuses even though the bank has been making even more massive losses in the last few years.

[Stanley]

I'm just reading this week's PE and it is full of examples....... Very depressing!