Icelandic Banks - The thread for OFFSHORE savers

TCA

occamsrazor wrote: »

Some more places to write to:

Official:

UK Treasury Ministers - [EMAIL="ministers@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk"]ministers@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk[/EMAIL]
UK Treasury Public enquiries - [EMAIL="public.enquiries@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk"]public.enquiries@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk[/EMAIL]
Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission - [EMAIL="fsc@gov.im"]fsc@gov.im[/EMAIL]

Media:

SKY News - [EMAIL="news@sky.com"]news@sky.com[/EMAIL]
Channel 4 News - [EMAIL="news@channel4.com"]news@channel4.com[/EMAIL]
BBC Working Lunch - [EMAIL="working.lunch@bbc.co.uk"]working.lunch@bbc.co.uk[/EMAIL]
ITN - [EMAIL="news@itn.co.uk"]news@itn.co.uk[/EMAIL]
Press Association - http://www.pressassociation.co.uk/contact.php
Times Online newsdesk - [EMAIL="news@timesonline.co.uk"]news@timesonline.co.uk[/EMAIL]
Times "Your Money" - [EMAIL="weekend.money@thetimes.co.uk"]weekend.money@thetimes.co.uk[/EMAIL]
Times Business - [EMAIL="business@thetimes.co.uk"]business@thetimes.co.uk[/EMAIL]
Telegraph Editorial - [EMAIL="telegrapheditorial@telegraph.co.uk"]telegrapheditorial@telegraph.co.uk[/EMAIL]
Guardian Money - [EMAIL="money@guardian.co.uk"]money@guardian.co.uk[/EMAIL]
Guardian Weekly (Expat) editor - [EMAIL="anna.bruce-lockhart@guardian.co.uk"]anna.bruce-lockhart@guardian.co.uk[/EMAIL]

That's an email rattled off to most of the above. I still feel sick to my stomach that I didn't CHAPS out my entire balance at the start of the week, instead of £10k a day by BACS from Monday - none of which I've seen yet. Two chances I think. Gutted!

MacBiggles

Update for those unable to hear Manx Radio (I'm listening www in Canada!)

According to Manx Radio, the meeting at the Gaiety Theatre, attended by 200 frazzled savers and KSFIoM employees is still underway.

Aiden Doherty, managing director of KSFIoM said that as late as yesterday, he was receiving support and encouragement from KSF UK, but that the closure of operations by HMG there resulted in the freezing of assets in Douglas and London.

Interviewed seperately, Treasury Minister Alan (?) Bell said he was unable to confirm as yet whether or not KSFIoM savers will be included in the new compensation reguilations as he is discussing the future of the frozen assets with three companies.

Some of the stories are ghastly. One (now) poor chap has flown in from Russia to find out what had happened to his £400,000 life savings. Another had lost £1m (yes, a million). The evaporation of confidence in baks is palapable. Copy my earlier letter (on this forum) to HM treasury and send it to them. Make a stink and Whitehall will act.
Best

On_The_Edge_3

The earlier radio report also mentioned that the Icelandic Govt withdrew support for KSFIoM last night, hence the collapse - does that impact upon the compensation scheme? Getting worried that both UK and Icelandic Govts going to try and walk away from this.

occamsrazor

TCA wrote: »

That's an email rattled off to most of the above.

Anyone writing to the media - it may be worth including the link to this thread in your email so they can see it's not just one or two people affected, and that some of the cases are very bad.

TCA

occamsrazor wrote: »

Anyone writing to the media - it may be worth including the link to this thread in your email so they can see it's not just one or two people affected, and that some of the cases are very bad.

That's a good idea. I missed that when emailing so I hope someone else can do that. With that in mind, I suppose any additional information that can be posted here from other sources will place as much detail as possible in the one place for onlookers to correctly gauge the gravity of the situation and extent of the exposure to UK citizens. The more that can do this the better our case will be highlighted.

BTW, I'd like to add my thanks to Occamsrazor and all others who have supplied pertinent and useful information thus far. I only wish for all our sakes you didn't have to. But thanks anyway.

Minotaur

Occam, thanks again for your input. I wish I had time at the moment to be of more use here -- the lack of it is one of the reasons I failed to take the action last week my instincts told me to. It is a heavy blow, but I am not going to write my sob story other than to say I kick myself more than I kick anyone else

What is to be done?

I have just tried to open http://www.kaupthingsingers.co.im/ and all I get is a perfectly blank white screen.

That is where we are at the moment. And there is little we can do until we can fill in that blank screen at least a bit with some of the following information:

What were the assets of KSF(IoM) when it stopped trading, and how much of them are recoverable? If everything was sent to Iceland last Friday, for example, then there is little hope indeed.

Depending on that, is there any other bank that would take the risk of purchasing KSF(IoM) or part of it?

Will the IoM 50K guarantee scheme cover KSF(IoM) and if so on what timescale and with what burden of proof of deposits?

Will Russia or the IMF come to Iceland’s aid by effectively buying it as a colony? (Yes, we are back to the 19th century, as Mrs Thatcher always wished).

It seems to me that we can do little until we know at least some of these things. Sending random letters to Whitehall or to Iceland will do little good at the moment.

What we can do is build a substantial ginger-group and send a barrage of letters based on actual knowledge when the appropriate moment comes. And that won’t be for at least a week.

The question is how we do that. I for one do not wish to put my name and address on a public forum; yet we can use the internet to pull together various already existing forums and assess quite how many we are, and how best to make an impact. This seems to be the first step, but I have no experience to know how to proceed further, and too little time (out of the job on which I now wholly depend) to do so.

Ideas?

(Sorry to write so at such length with so little useful content. I think that waking press sympathy in the UK is a good idea; but as has been pointed out it is a double edged sword, and not infrequently a boomerang.)

occamsrazor

TCA wrote: »

For anyone not up on emailing, for the media emails I just used the one email (addressed Dear Sir/Madam) and emailed to myself and just blind copied (bcc) all the other email addresses. Quick and easy

Actually that's not the best way - if you address to yourself and bcc the recipient, it stands a much greater chance of getting caught in a spam filter and not seen. It's best to send a separate email to each address with the recipient in the To box (copy/paste the content if you want)

Monkeyface3604

Anyone not already aware there is another forum on money saver expert which has a lot more info and seems more people, what we need to do is centralise the discussion so i urge you to join

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1203227&page=12

occamsrazor

By the way, thanks for all your thanks!

I'm just frustrated that after months and months of research into where I could put my money I somehow managed to end up choosing the worst subsidiary of the worst bank. What luck!

liebena

Monkeyface, I am new to this, but the link you're trying to get us to join is confusing....is that not the forum we are on?