Issue 7 of CQN Magazine is out now! We continue our campaigning focus on the crisis in Scottish football from recent weeks as well as delivering many great articles on Celtic.
You can get a glimpse of the magazine below but go to the dedicated magazine site here to read it properly (which you’ll not be able to do below). Nip to page 64 for my favourite article this month, comparing the age of the current Celtic team to some of our great teams from the past. It’s an eye opener.
A special word of thanks to Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News, who this morning got Uefa to confirm: “We are in contact with the Scottish FA and offering assistance”.
We have tons to talk about in the next couple of days, Brian Kennedy, Sailen Manna – don’t let me forget to talk about Sailen, Athletic (one of the most important cup ties in years?), Kenny Shiels (don’t underestimate this guy) and we have a Cup Final to look forward to! Struggling to fit it in but we’ll try.
We are now shipping hard copies of the magazine from the UK – and sold out last month (unlike Rangers tickets last week). Order your copy by clicking on the link below. If you want a copy shipped overseas (note, seas, not sees) email me, celticquicknews@gmail.com (for Britain and Ireland please use the link below).
Pay by card or Paypal – We don’t do clowns!
You can support the online edition by making a discretionary donation here. Thanks to James, Bart, Bobby and David, all of whom are probably still asleep, and everyone who contributed.
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danso_1888 on 16 March, 2012 at 12:10 said:
On mr thomson and his tweet if anything serious about celtic was out there
im sure it would have arisen by now via the scottish media to take the shame
of their beloved rangers,
………..
You can be confident they are doing their best to find anything, even shug might be getting over his fear of the internet to try and find something, anything even if there is nothing to be found.
Wonky radar…….. ” There is some bad juju down Ibrox way.”……
Now that’s got to be the understatement of the Century…….LOL…!!….HH…!!!!
What about RFCIA’s application to “play” football next season. Have they applied for their licence yet? Forget European football, I’m talking about the bread and butter stuff.
I think you need to have held an AGM and have up to date accounts by the end of this month or the games a bogey……………
All this crap by the huns about this not being rangers fault but wee Graigies so why should the fans suffer.Tell them to ask the fans of Gretna, Livingstone, Dundee etc how it feels.But hey this is different WHY because they are the PEE PILL
“ma arse”
Good on CW-looks like our hero is going nowhere-see you in court
oh and minty will be on sky at 1.30 being interviewed,
i still think the he knows how the ftt has gone and is laying the groundwork
so as he can blame others forthe mess,remember just before admin he appeared
at murray park and had a long chat with wally mcoist coincidence?and now doing media interviews to chosen people, the sky dude is a rangers supporter as well,mmmmmmmmmmm.
Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 | Posted by admin Revealed: the hornet and the sting which are stopping us learning the truth about the collapse of HBOS
By Ian Fraser
Published: Sunday Herald
Date: February 26th, 2012
Results released last Friday showed a sea of red ink engulfing the state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group. Trumpeted at the time of its September 2008 formation as the “bank for Britain”, the 41%-taxpayer owned business unveiled annual losses of £3.5 billion for 2011, nearly double those RBS announced the previous day.
With the commentary focusing on the fallout from payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal, and bleak economic conditions helping to dash chief executive António Horta-Osório’s hopes of achieving a return-on-equity of more than 12.5% by 2014, it is no surprise that few noticed a bland statement buried on page 195 of the 204-page results news release.
In a section titled “Contingent liabilities and commitments” Lloyds referred to “enforcement proceedings against Bank of Scotland plc in relation to its corporate division pre-2009. The proceedings are ongoing and the group is co-operating fully. It is too early to predict the outcome or estimate reliably any potential financial effects of the enforcement proceedings…”
Here, then is the answer to the real story of the near collapse of HBOS and (subsequently) Lloyds and about why Lloyds’ future prospects remain so opaque. The three sentences hold the key to understanding why the Financial Services Authority, despite much prodding from Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee, considers itself incapable of producing a report into the reasons for the September 2008 collapse of the Edinburgh-based institution, which carried 300 years of Scottish commercial history.
For all the widespread criticism of the influence of Fred Goodwin’s lawyers and others, the FSA’s December 2011 report into RBS went some way towards creating “closure”. But the FSA, chaired by Lord Turner, last month indicated that, where HBOS is concerned, and despite promises to the contrary, no such closure is going to be possible at least for the foreseeable future.
Adair Turner told the Treasury Select Committee last month that it’s so-called “enforcement proceedings” might be prejudiced if the regulator were to embark on researching and writing a comprehensive report on reasons for HBOS’s collapse, including an exploration of the FSA’s own failure to properly regulate and supervise the Edinburgh-based institution.
Turner, a fleet-footed former vice-chairman of the investment bank Merrill Lynch Europe, who has been FSA chairman since September 2008, told MPs: “We should produce a report, or somebody should produce a report on HBOS. In timing terms, we have the complication…that we have an enforcement process in place…and until that is produced we cannot produce the report.
“In summary, I believe that we should produce something on HBOS which is equivalent to [the RBS report]. The good news is it should be shorter, because it is a simpler business…”
Well up to a point. The enforcement action to which Turner referred is understood to include ‘Operation Hornet’ a major fraud investigation led by Thames Valley Police and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, which began after an in-depth Sunday Herald report in November 2008.
Hornet is investigating alleged money laundering, corruption and large-scale fraud linked to the “distressed assets” division of HBOS’s Bank of Scotland Corporate unit, which came under the direction of the well-connected banker Peter Cummings, centred on its Reading branch. A total of nine people have been arrested so far but none have yet been charged with any offence. No charges or allegations have been made against Cummings in relation to the Reading affair or any other matter.
Suspects in the case are alleged to have siphoned off and laundered an estimated £1bn lent by HBOS to up to 200 customer accounts. They are also alleged to have expropriated assets worth scores of millions and, in a series of administrations and other deals, were allowed by the bank to take ownership of many of the surviving assets.
Thames Valley Police last night declined to comment on the ongoing police inquiry.
In June 2010 the FSA confirmed it had commenced its own enforcement probe investigation into the HBOS Reading scandal, under section 168 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. The FSA also continues to pursue various other investigations and enforcement proceedings into the wider HBOS group, with a particular focus on its corporate department.
After creating a complex lattice-like network of joint-venture companies with often high-profile borrowers in “frothy” sectors including property development, retail and private equity, Cummings and his team lent out a staggering £116 billion.
Cummings, already a director of various HBOS subsidiaries and off-balance-sheet-vehicles including Uberior Investments, became a director of some 147 of the joint venture companies in which HBOS had or has significant stakes, and to which it also lent many billions of pounds. The blurring of the boundaries between lender and borrower (with Cummings chairing the credit committee that weighed up whether or not to lend to companies 49% owned by the bank, on whose boards Cummings or other HBOS executives sat) led at best to the mispricing of risk and at worst to serious conflicts of interest.
The partners in HBOS’s galaxy of joint-ventures included well-known entrepreneurs such as Geoff Ball of Cala, Sir Rocco Forte of RF Hotels, Sir Philip Green of Arcadia and Top Shop, Sir Tom Hunter of West Coast Capital, Sir David Murray of Murray International Holdings, Paul Kemsley of Rock Investments, John Kennedy of Kenmore, Kevin McCabe of Teesland and Scarborough Development Group, Donald Macdonald of Macdonald Hotels, Sandy Orr of City Inns, the Reuben Brothers of Sapphire Retail Fund, David Sutherland of Tulloch and Iain Wotherspoon of Kilmartin. None of these individuals is known to be connected to Operation Hornet and no suggestion of impropriety has been made against them at any time.
After Lloyds’ black horse had saddled itself with Cummings’ poisonous legacy Tim Tookey, finance director of the enlarged group, concluded that an astounding £80bn or 69% of the £116bn Peter Cummings and his team had lent was “outside Lloyds TSB’s risk appetite”. One of the issues was that some of the loans had been dressed up as equity or hybrid capital in order to mislead regulators and enable HBOS to minimise the amount of loss-absorbing capital it needed to set aside.
Business people have been urging the FSA to properly investigate alleged unorthodox activities inside HBOS’s corporate lending arm since as early 2005.
The Sunday Herald has obtained a copy of a letter dated February 21, 2005 from one Scottish businessman asking the FSA “whether the operations of a secret bank account held in the British Virgin Islands, called Charlotte 18, was acting in the best interests of the customers and shareholders of The Bank of Scotland … Were money laundering processes and procedures being clearly followed?”
The letter also asked whether it was appropriate that the bank was using “assets to cover up the bad debts caused by the collapse of a company run by the former managing director of the Bank of Scotland”. Separately the letter raised concerns about the dual role of Sir James Crosby as chief executive of HBOS and as a director of the FSA.
Like others, the complaint fell on deaf ears at the FSA’s Canary Wharf HQ. The regulator responded by saying that it did not police “business models”. Since the 2008 banking crisis, the regulator has marginally toughened up its act and appears to have gained the beginnings of an appetite for probing the darker corners of the labyrinthine network of joint venture companies formed under Cummings’ rule.
It therefore came as a surprise when, last year, it emerged that the FSA had attempted to persuade Peter Cummings to agree to a voluntary ban from working in the City in exchange for dropping its investigation into his time as HBOS’s head of corporate banking. Cummings refused to accept the deal, saying that if any evidence of wrongdoing were to be found, he should be prosecuted accordingly and if it were not, the regulator should clear his name. It was also reported in January that Cummings was fighting with the regulator to prove that the whole HBOS board, including its former chairman Lord Stevenson, shared responsibility for the duff loans.
Julian Stevens, managing partner of Bristol-based financial advisory firm Harvest IFM, who like many IFAs is disillusioned by what he sees as the FSA’s wilful blindness to alleged frauds inside large banks, believes that the regulator favours such a deal to avoid its own regulatory failures being brought further into the limelight.
Stevens said: “The reason the FSA doesn’t want to go to court is that its own failings would very probably come under the spotlight so, by offering a deal, it gets the other side alone to admit culpability and pay up without anybody else finding out about the extent to which its own regulatory negligence contributed to things going as badly wrong as they did.”
In November 2009, it also emerged that the FSA was conducting a supervisory review scrutinising disclosures made by HBOS’ board to shareholders and investors prior to the HBOS rights issue in 2008.
Leading Treasury Select Committee member Michael Fallon disputes Turner’s assertion that enforcement proceedings preclude a wider overview-style report into what went wrong at HBOS. Fallon, who is also deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, said the delay into publishing a report into HBOS’s collapse is unacceptable.
He told the Sunday Herald: “Most members of the Treasury committee were furious at the FSA’s initial failure to publish a proper report into RBS. Having won that round, there’s now immense frustration at the length of time the FSA is taking to produce a report on HBOS.”
“If the enforcement action means we’re going to wait for two years before a comprehensive HBOS report can be produced,” said Fallon, “then I would say there’s a very strong case for the production of a partial report focusing on the regulatory side.”
Fallon, MP for Sevenoaks since 1997, added that such a report should “focus on identifying where the regulatory failures occurred”.
He said: “the FSA must, surely, be able to distinguish between enforcement proceedings relating to the actions of officers and former officers of the bank, which could culminate in court cases which could take months if not years, and making clear where its own regulatory failures occurred. We need to know whether there was inexcusable regulatory oversight.”
Another member of the Treasury select committee, Jesse Norman MP, agreed that it ought to be possible to produce an overview report into the reasons for the collapse of HBOS, and the related regulatory failures at the FSA, before the on-going enforcement and criminal proceedings are completed.
He cited the report conducted by Lord Bingham into the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in 1991-92 which ended up being heavily focused on the supervisory role of Bank of England. “That was a model of its kind. There was no requirement to subpoena anyone and everyone was treated confidentially. The related criminal proceedings were not settled for a decade or more”.
One senior Scottish businessman said: “The rot set at Bank of Scotland in when the likes of Gavin Masterton and Peter Cummings started handing millions of pounds to their pals, without doing much in the way of due diligence.
“Remember that any banker who lends money to a business that is trading whilst insolvent – meaning, a business that is unable to pay its bills when they fall due – might be considered to be complicit in criminal acts. Any director of a bank that kept insolvent companies – including football clubs – afloat in this way was recklessly putting shareholders and depositors’ money at risk.”
The case for a public inquiry
Last month Turner as good as admitted that the FSA may not be the appropriate body to investigate the collapses of banks that it failed to adequately regulate. On January 30, he told the Treasury Select Committee that it may not bee too late launch a public inquiry into all of the UK’s bank failures, including those of RBS and HBOS.
Turner told MPs: “You could argue that if we could all roll it back to 2009, we ought to have launched a Royal Commission, which would have looked at absolutely everything, including each of the banks that failed, all together rather than one by one, and at the role of all three authorities [Treasury, Bank of England and FSA]. I think there could be merit in that at some stage.
This added weight to growing calls for a Leveson-style public inquiry into banks that failed. Others who have called for such an independent no-holds-barred inquiry include Tony Shearer, former chief executive of Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, Paul Moore, former head of regulatory risk at HBOS, and the former Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell.
In their view, Britons will never regain trust in their banks until the reasons for their failures are properly investigated, and from a wholly independent and unbiased standpoint.
Writing in his blog Campbell said: “The consequences [of the UK’s bank failures] have been greater and for more people than the phone hacking scandal which has rightly led to an inquiry into the practices of the modern media …
“I expect that one day [David Cameron] will have to set up a banking inquiry too. There has been no sense of closure on what happened … it could look at the whole picture – the role of politicians, regulators, credit ratings agencies, bankers, the lot.
“Unless it happens, and unless it leads to change the public anger will not subside, the politicians will continue to respond to it in a piecemeal way, and we’ll end up learning next to nothing.”
Pat McFadden Scots-born Labour MP for Wolverhampton Southeast and another member of the Treasury Select Committee, said the danger in allowing the FSA to conduct inquiries into UK bank failures was that it ended up with a lot of “self-justification”.
McFadden said: “When a regulator does these sorts of reports, the temptation is for it to place the blame in places other than on its own doorstep”.
Julian Stevens, managing partner of Bristol-based financial advisory firm Harvest IFM and a long-standing critic of the FSA, said he would welcome a Leveson-style inquiry into the banking crisis. He said: “That would be a good idea but it would only have real validity if it was ruthlessly impartial.”
T4 why thanks you.
The way things are going Laurel and Hardy administrators are gonny be on coourt more regular than Rafa Nadal, id have said Andy Murray but hes generally out early.
How can Duff & Duffer be the agents in any bids if the club is “technically” not in administration?
What legal authority have the “administrators” got if they haven’t went through the correct legal procedures?
How can they usurp the owner (our hero Whytey) if they have no legal right do so?
This whole situation is utterly bewildering.
Truly amazing point 1 – Darrell King’s statement on Radio Clyde last night. Truly amazing point 2 – the amount of ‘exclusives’ Traynor & Jackson have managed to print in the past four weeks. Truly amazing point 3 – the amount of information that the Daily Record has managed to print today about each of the potential bidders for Rancid FC (more on those 2 pages than they ever printed about Our Hero).
The weegreenman……..Ssssssshhhhh…..I’ve been keeping THAT in the background…….ah, well, now that it’s out…
….they are not going to be able to produce audited accounts unless they disclose all the debt hidden in MIH…….and that means they cannot play in Scottish Football next season……simples
Is Camp-bell on gardening leave yet?
Can’t wait to hear more hot steam from that flannel SDM on sky!
wonky –
Bewildering. That’s the word I always keep coming back to. None of it makes sense to me. I have resigned myself to not trying to understand, just sitting by and watching the show as it all unfolds…
Glad we have a match on Sunday :-)
In case you missed it : THIS is comedy genius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pDk75Y1SZ4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
brucecassavetes @12.29
What was Darrell Kings staement last night. I missed that if you dont mind thanks?
Tim Jim
According to the SFA website the Scottish Cup final is on Saturday, May 19 2012. I posted on here awhile back, (in response to the poster who flagged it up) that the reason the 2013 Scottish Cup Final was being moved to a Sunday (26 May I think) was to enable our esteemed SFA to attend the Champions League Final at Wembley on the Saturday night. The logic being that if they were forced to attend their own cup final in Glasgow they would be unlikely to make the kickoff in London, even if they were flown down on David Murray’s private jet. The SFA excuse is that they have been invited to be part of the FA’s 150th anniversary celebrations (the reason the Champions League Final returns to Wembley despite being there last year) of which the CL final is deemed to be part thereof. Or in other words to enable our esteemed President, Campbell Ogilvie, to attend!
@miki67 — I can certainly attest to what this article notes about education regarding the Famine and Irish immigration to the States. I can’t recall a single instance where we may have spent any notable time discussing or learning about this topic.
Everything I’ve learned about the Famine, etc. I had to learn on my own as an adult as part of conducting research on my Irish and Scottish ancestors.
Listened to Clyde SSB on the way home from work – not something I do very often BUT a caller was asking about when the SFA decide to conduct their fit and proper person test. Is it only when things go awry, is it when other point it out to them, or is it immediately when the SFA is advised of the Board Members in their annual submission.
At some point in the discussion the caller asked why it took until the BBC program before the SFA pricked and ear up. Why was no investigation done earlier when Whyte’s history was common knowledge.
Both guys in the studio were quick and vociferous in stating that “But no-one knew about Whyte’s history, it wasn’t public knowledge”.
Well EXCUSE ME. It was public knowledge if you bothered to look. AND that information was available to all who follow CQN, Phil and TaxCaseRangers long before the BBC reported it.
Also the latest whatabouttery from the (not in) admin club supporters is laughable. “Please sir, we didn’t do anything wrong. And look at them, they’re just as bad”.
there’s a cup final on sunday!!
first leg of a treble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbjIWCS_bko&feature=related
About Thompson’s remark:
I don’t really know about such things, but is it right for a reporter to fling in an ambiguous and potentially damaging comment like that when Celtic is a publicly traded company?
Or am I just talking mince?
If you read the below that means Whyte and Ellis have told them to carry on. This is such a stitch up by Whyte.
I will point again that as far as I am aware, the company ‘Close Brothers’ gave rangers an undisclosed loan in November which was covered by rangers assets.
I have yet to see them throw their hat into the ring when it comes to getting their money back.
A statement from Duff & Phelps said: A spokesman for Duff & Phelps said: “Following our appointment as administrators of Rangers Football Club, investigations revealed the company was registered with the Financial Service Authority between 2008-2009.
“This discovery meant that our appointment should have been notified to the FSA by the directors of the company and consented to in advance. This consent has now been sought and granted and our appointment has to be ratified by the Court of Session on March 19.
“Until such time we act as Interim Managers of the company and the powers provided to us by the Court are identical to those of administrators, so as to ensure that the case can continue with the same level of speed and focus as has been developed to date.”
Re this deadline of today for bidders to buy them that may or may not be in administration but will certainly soon be in liquidation, is there a link with that deadline and the fact Mmmmm was away seeing his lawyers yesterday?
Mmm we should be told.
If celtic have banned the Daily Ranger and the BBC from pre-cup final press conference, will that mean no interviews with BBC (who are showing game live) before/after match?
Could be quite funny, wee Chico getting told where to stick his microphone.
They are a cancer. We know deep down we will never rid our bigoted wee country ( at least certain parts of it) of them. But I will be glad to see them stumble and limp on like a lame duck ripe for the shooting gallery: they are doomed to a future of hunskelping’s, ritual humiliation whilst being force fed fat lashings of humble pie…let them eat (humble) pie (dollops of it).
Nice to see The Whyte Kinight’s terse exacting statement.
Selling R@ngers from under him is Verboten.
It’sGoodToTalkCSC
Guys……….
I have between 500 and 600 points on my Subway card which I’m informed will get me 5 lattes.
YET Duff and Duffer tell me they can’t accept it as a genuine offer for RFC(AI) as it’s non transferrable
Back to the drawing board
Jelly and Icecream in ML9
miki67 on 16 March, 2012 at 12:41 said:
Classic lol.
Re the tweet about Celtic’s turn will come..
Celtic are up to their necks in this. Their ‘dominance’ of the SPL/SFA (it must be true because I’ve read it on twitter) has allowed them to ensure that these revered bodies would fail to act in a timely manner when Rangers were first tempted to break the rules. Their complacency encouraged poor Rangers to go on breaking and bending the rules until such time as BAM! – their crimes have reached such a level that they are cornered.
It is all Celtic’s fault.
In the absence of W.I.T.S and Timbhoy in Spain, and for those hanging out for tips, the OLBG toilet tips are 8/8 so far this week and they are backing Midnight Chase (12/1) in the big one followed by Chapoturgeon (6/1) in the Foxhunters Chase at 4:00.
It’s been a wee while since I posted but thought this was worth sharing. For the younger readers, Judy Collins recorded the original version….
Once we were rich,
With nose in the air
Plenty of cash to go around,
Now the baw’s in the air
I gave cash to the clowns
Isn’t it bliss?
We have cash to invest
Blue noses running around,
PayPal does the rest
We gave cash to the clowns
Yes, the cyber net clowns
When I hit the ‘pay button’ my heart fell to the floor
Finally knowing web page I wanted wasn’t yours
A Bluenose in Blackpool was making a mint
While over at Ibrox, Rangers* are still skint
Don’t you love farce,
Our own fault, it’s clear
I thought I’d paid what you’d want and I want,
Wrong info I fear
I gave my cash to the clowns
All my money to clowns
Yes Bluenose is a clown
What a surprise,
Who could foresee?
The plea from Ally & Sandy that was directed to me
Why only now I see my cash has drifted away
A pair of numpties, what more can I say?
We’re no longer rich, isn’t it clear?
That liquidation is drawing so near
And where are the clowns?
Quick send in the clowns?
Don’t bother they’re here.
I’ll go for the, “mince” option, then.
This is brilliant! Well they have that £20.00 from the pensioner, so it is a start. £1000.00 a head. LOL!!!
‘The Blue Knight’s consortium led by former Chairman Paul Murray seems favourite having joined forces with a team of financial big hitters. Fans will also be asked to contribute £1000 a head to help the Blue Knights save their club.’
It’s not fair that Hunageddon is drawing away all the attention from Mini-hunageddon.
Hearts deserve ice cream and jelly too.
Maybe a small scoop of ice cream with a teaspoon of jelly. (thumbsup)
ASonOfDan – Fans will also be asked to contribute £1000 a head to help the Blue Knights save their club.’
If that’s their business plan, they might as well burn down Ibrox for the insurance. (thumbsup)
Miki67….
HaHa stupid hun.
Is that Mr Custards keyboard he’s stolen.
As the representative the largest professional football club in Scotland by attendance and turnover, Celtic’s chief executive sits on the SFA’s Professional Game Board. Eric Riley of Celtic is also one of 6 members of the SPL’s Board.
This is the smoking-gun, conflict of interest and evidence of corruption that is currently vexing the vast body of online Rangers and alluded to by Thommo.
I’m not sure what is worse, being invited to, and accepting places on, the boards of bodies of which you are a member, or stealing tens of millions of pounds from the taxpayer.
Had a nightmare last night:
There is a dungeon beneath the skid bowl called the Saturn 6 Zone where they keep mutants and circus freaks. The human kebab controls them with a whip and feeds them on scraps of raw meat- they are to unleash them next season…it will be their secret weapon called “operation shadey”…a Uruguayian midget on stilts called Umpa Lumpa will be their goalkeeper…small monkeys with nipple on their heads will patrol the midfield…Billy the Python playing up front as a lone striker…a cryogenetically frozen turnip will be their new coach ( a Swede)…a gorilla with tomato for eyes will play on the wing…and their new owner will be the Grim Reaper who will be duped by a Clown in armour…aaaaahhhhhh! The alarm woke me up!
So going by the administrator’s statements we are 4 hours and counting down.
I take it there is a press conference scheduled down Ibokes way today?
If no one bids then that’s that shurely shun?
But then again, expect the unexpected or downright hilarious from this mob.
HH