Icelandic Banks - The thread for OFFSHORE savers

donal_f

Guys - thanks for all the info today - its helped to get through a bad situation. Pardon me asking - but under the new 50k guarantee - is it now 100% of your savings are guaranteed up to that level, or is it still 75% of your savings?

occamsrazor

donal_f wrote: »

Guys - thanks for all the info today - its helped to get through a bad situation. Pardon me asking - but under the new 50k guarantee - is it now 100% of your savings are guaranteed up to that level, or is it still 75% of your savings?

From my reading it's 100% of the first £50k

donal_f

occamsrazor wrote: »

From my reading it's 100% of the first £50k

For those with less than £50k, that's good news at least?

One other question - in the case of the BCCI failure in the IoM - did depositors just get their deposits back over the 20 year period - or did they get the deposits back plus interest? Because the interest over a 20 year period would be significant!

stanley317

Answer to donal_f, the new scheme offers 100% of the first 50,000.

Answer to occamsrazor: I found the text of the old scheme, which may give some guidance. The levy was calculated based on the following formula.

"The lower limit is £25,000 and the upper limit is the lesser of £250,000 and 0.125 per cent of the relevant banking institution's average sterling and foreign currency deposit base as calculated in accordance with the Regulations."

By my calculation a bank would need 200 Million in deposits to pay the full 250,000. Considering that KSF had only 84 Million (allthough this was after the run), we can probably assume that they won't all be paying the full levy.

skintagainnow

First posting on this forum, have lost /// possibly // probably everything with the KE IOM demise, as others the lack of information has been the worst to cope with.

Many thanks to all who have posted here and having read through all 15 pages, my situation is much the same as many of you.
Money there as an interim from our UK house sale waiting to be transferred into Euro's for our only source of income and the refurbishment of our retirement home, which at present a former watermill and a ramshackled shell. We are both mid fifties so little chance of being able to save / work / get back to the comfortable position of just enough behind us so as not having to worry about how to pay the next terms school fees or the lack of any pensions, our old property was our pension fund.
We like many others posting in this forum have worked bl**dy hard for the last 30 odd years to get to this position and to see it vanish just when we thought we'd made it AAaaaarrggghhh

In answer to some stating it's easy to open new accounts without a Uk address when did you last try it - we couldn't open new accounts in Uk or abroad to hold the monies as now classed as no fixed address the "new" property is classified as an industrial building therefore not acceptable to banks for personal account/s. Trying to open any account in Uk or mainland Europe with no fixed address options were :- always passed over to the offshore division or simply refused. Even with the KE IOM we had to go through endless questionaires / forms / identity checks and confirmation of where the funds were coming from all this only 3 weeks ago --- we could of course have left it in the Uk current account with all the risks that involves - hindsight much less risk of being cleaned out of the few hundred thou..by scammers -- than this semi legalised whatever it turns out to be.

Well that's my whinge, monies gone - try and move on and forget it - if anything comes and I will take an active part in any action that can be organised - if it doesn't as Ester used to say ""That's life""

stanley317

donal_f wrote: »

For those with less than £50k, that's good news at least?

One other question - in the case of the BCCI failure in the IoM - did depositors just get their deposits back over the 20 year period - or did they get the deposits back plus interest? Because the interest over a 20 year period would be significant!

I'm not sure what happened in the end but this article talks about 60% paid back after 10 years.

http://www.tax-news.com/archive/story/Isle_Of_Man_Repays_60_To_BCCI_Depositors_xxxx4933.html

This other article is interesting based on the discussions about who if anyone we can sue. In the BCCI case people sued just about any institution with deep pockets; bank of England, Bank of America, Bank of India. The bank of England case was in relation to it failing in its duties to regulate BCCI. Interestingly the liquidators are actually the ones doing the suiing.

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/article/0,1002,sid%253D5049%2526cid%253D8056,00.html

occamsrazor

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/money/city/article1790512.ece

SUN article on Icesave/Kaupthing - no mention of Isle of Man people losing out at all.
The Sun sells a lot of copies abroad to expats in Spain etc:

[EMAIL="talkback@the-sun.co.uk"]talkback@the-sun.co.uk[/EMAIL]

Captain_Mainwaring_2

Oh well, join the happy club I suppose. I thought everything was OK with KE IoM, I used the debit card on wednesday with no problems, but even by the I suspect it was too late.
Seems as if the only hope is for a buyout, I can face having to wait, but I'm not sure I can face watching my kids future disappear just like that.

Does anyone have half a clue as to who the interested parties may be?

occamsrazor

Some publicity in the press, finally. Faisal Islam talks about offshore savers on Channel 4 News:

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

Coverage was sympathetic to offshore savers, said they had received many horror story emails from them, and that offshore savers were mostly ordinary people not the super-rich as some think.

However, some less-than-hopeful points made:

UK local government, police, hospitals, charities owed millions, maybe 100s of millions, by Icelandic banks.
Estimate was Britain may only ever get back 20% of what's owed.
UK Treasury says offshore accounts are a matter for Guernsey and Isle of Man to deal with.

You can email them at: [EMAIL="news@channel4.com"]news@channel4.com[/EMAIL]

occamsrazor

Repeating updated list of official and media contacts for newcomers to this thread:

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]
KSF(IoM) Liquidator Michael Simpson of PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Isle of Man:
http://www.pwc.com/extweb/newcowebpo...&CH=&CSS=OCEAN


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]
Daily Mail "This is Money" - [EMAIL="editor@thisismoney.co.uk"]editor@thisismoney.co.uk[/EMAIL]
The SUN - [EMAIL="talkback@the-sun.co.uk"]talkback@the-sun.co.uk[/EMAIL]

News from the Isle of Man:

IOM Today - http://www.iomtoday.co.im/sectionhome.aspx?sectionID=870
Manx Radio - http://www.manxradio.com/newsIndex.aspx