Lloyds shareholders "Furious" - why?

stonethrower

Wookster wrote: »

I don't think they (as a group) were against the acquisition, didn't it get passed by a fairly high shareholder vote?

Some might have been more cautious having seen Northern Rock shareholders be left to the dogs...

Most of them did not get a vote it was a vote only for preferential shareholders but they voted for it by a massive majority

SamIAm_3-2

mewbie wrote: »

Well that's one view. But when banks have been a fairly safe 'bet' for several hundred years you could forgive people for assuming it would just continue.

I agree, and I have never blamed them for that assumption - it's one I could see myself making.

mewbie wrote: »

There is another twist to this story. A while back I believe there was a rights issue, where the bank took more money from the shareholders while at the same time not giving them the full sorry picture. You could possibly call that fraud, and I would be very annoyed if it had happened to me.

I think this is the crux of it. Without the whole truth and/or all the facts then I can see why the shareholders are furious. I had wrongly assumed that the shareholders would have been presented with exactly the same information as the board, and would therefore be in a position to make up their own minds without having to trust in the board to make the "correct" decision. In this case I would have said it's up to the individual shareholders to take full responsibility for their stake.

mewbie wrote: »

On another note I wonder what has happened to me? Defending shareholders in a bank. Many, too many, years ago it would have been "smash the capitalist system".

Haha...too much time on here trying to see both sides of the bank's story?

pizzagirl

SamIAm wrote: »

Surely if you buy shares you understand the risks involved in doing so? If you really don't like a decision that the board makes then sell you shares! So why are all the shareholders "furious"?

Individual shareholders mainly hold their shares in nominee accounts and so never got a vote on whether they would rescue hbos. The institutional big shareholders voted for it en masse as anyone with a pension have learnt to their cost. So you can understand individual investors being rathre unhappy about it. It was less than democratic.

SamIAm_3-2

pizzagirl wrote: »

Individual shareholders mainly hold their shares in nominee accounts and so never got a vote on whether they would rescue hbos.

Just because you didn't get to vote doesn't automatically give you the right to be angry now. If you were a shareholder who didn't get to vote but didn't agree with the result of the vote you can still sell up. By not selling up you implicitly agree with the result of the vote, or you've not taken an interest in it. In either case you have no one to blame but yourself.

However, as has been pointed out on this thread by MrFonzerelli and mewbie, if the shareholders were not provided with all the facts then I can understand their anger at the board - and indeed I expect I would be equally angry.

pizzagirl

SamIAm wrote: »

. If you were a shareholder who didn't get to vote but didn't agree with the result of the vote you can still sell up. By not selling up you implicitly agree with the result of the vote, or you've not taken an interest in it. In either case you have no one to blame but yourself.

.

The only problem is that the share price crashed between the intention of having a vote being announced and the result being known.

More widely, everyone can see that the government had a major hand in this comedy errors. This was no normal corporate deal

1echidna

SamIAm wrote: »

Just because you didn't get to vote doesn't automatically give you the right to be angry now. If you were a shareholder who didn't get to vote but didn't agree with the result of the vote you can still sell up. By not selling up you implicitly agree with the result of the vote, or you've not taken an interest in it. In either case you have no one to blame but yourself.

However, as has been pointed out on this thread by MrFonzerelli and mewbie, if the shareholders were not provided with all the facts then I can understand their anger at the board - and indeed I expect I would be equally angry.

I have quite a number of smallish investments. Life is too short for me to continually read up all I could on all of them, it would occupy all my time and then some. I suspect that the investor who does this properly is a very rare beast indeed. I rely on quick skims of company literature and keeping an eye on the financial press. This seems a very esoteric argument to me.

Dan:_4

pizzagirl wrote: »

The only problem is that the share price crashed between the intention of having a vote being announced and the result being known.

It was obviously going to go through. More or less a done deal from the announcement and the voting was just a formality.

worried_jim

I am shareholder and I am taking it on the chin, however if things haven't picked up in a few years I may need a new chin!

Kez100

What would annoy me is that there seems to be something very fishy about it.

I've lost a mint on some shares (not banks) but it appears to be purely market sentiment, awfully large pension scheme and general bad management. Whilst I am not happy that is a gamble you make with shares. However, the takeover/merger was a very very fishy situation - from ignorance of competition, to lack of DD and the speed it was all done. All by a bank, smaller than HBOS and known generally for beng a plodder.

Dan:_4

fatpig wrote: »

This was on the craziest deals done in UK corporate history. Instead of just one big bank going down the plughole the government decided that 2 should go down instead. Unbelievable.

No bank has gone down