What's likely to have happened with our Northern Rock shares?

dengrainger

Oops, sorry, forgot to mention in all the excitement...

It has been confirmed to me officially tonight that the N Rock Foundation ( did wonderful charitable work, and now closing) did hold 15% of the Rock shareholding.
Tragedy upon tragedy.

redux

dengrainger wrote: »

Thanks, but no further contributions from me, whatever nastiness you carpers care to post from your anonymous 'brave' status.
It s you who do not recognise that your grandmothers, or people just like them have been let down.

I would have thought that on a site like this 'money saving expert' you would all be concerned for the little shareholder robbed by the powerful Government; nimby?

You don't seem to have made your version of events plausible enough to convince everyone, and a light dusting of abrasiveness might not improve things.

Members of this forum seem to have quite often given advice about the wisdom or otherwise of holding a lot of shares in just or two companies.

cloud_dog

dengrainger wrote: »

I would have thought that on a site like this 'money saving expert' you would all be concerned for the little shareholder robbed by the powerful Government; nimby?

I think you've confused posters on this site with some other dross. People on here tend to consider a poster view/position, digest it and if they come to a different position or the facts of the original piece is less than valid they will offer their thoughts or position on the matter.

Certainly on this thread it's not about the politics or the the little guy getting one back it's about the merit of the case. On a different note there have been occasions where someone has posted that they are trying to protect their dear old mum/dad/aunty savings from being eaten up by nursing home fees etc when they have worked their whole lives and never claimed anything off the State. Generally they are informed where to get off.

It's not about being a little guy it's about the merit of the case. Sadly I've lost thousands of pounds via investments, one or two going bust etc.

bowlhead99

dengrainger wrote: »

Sadly, this isn't a question of who won or lost the debate.
Bowlhead did make some useful contributions, which I will review with our advisers and lawyers.

As for the rest of the 'gang' who jumped on his bandwagon, being generally negative or concentrating on minor issues or quibbling over semantics, my committee will waste no time examining the dross.

This sort of thing is not a competition so there isn't supposed to be a winner or a loser. From my side it isn't a case of trying to win a debate. It is just pointing out some common sense points about why shareholders in risky investments may need to take losses on the chin.

There are people popping up on these forums all the time looking for 'their share' of 'what is right' in a compensation culture - I was missold this, I demand restitution for that, and so on. Often they don't want to hear an unbiased third party perspective and get argumentative or obnoxious when they don't get the answer they want. Some of us are patient with them and some are not.

Clearly you are working hard for your own interests and the other former shareholders in your action group but I don't think you have much of a case, which seems to have been borne out in your fruitless court attempts so far.

The semantic differences that in some cases you haven't necessarily 'lost' a court case, it is just that the court didn't think it was worth hearing the evidence, so you didn't get to present it properly... should not fill you with false hope. If your case is ignored and thrown out before it starts because it isn't strong enough, that should be taken to mean exactly that - you don't have a decent case and a European court is not going to overturn a UK one which is closer to the facts and has determined what is and what isn't in the UK national interests. So you are on a hiding to nothing. It doesn't mean that you have the moral high ground and would win if only they would give you a chance.

I respect your saying that you have been given a few things to think about with your lawyers. If that is true, cheers. But to be honest, I would hope I have not given you anything new whatsoever which would be notable and worth going to speak to your lawyers about. All I did was look at the most basic of facts and principles of investment/ risk / capitalism / valuation, and give some common sense bullet points. It is inconceivable that anything I've said has not already crossed the mind of your advisers and lawyers who have been looking at this with you for over five years.

People here are simply telling you to throw in the towel, accept the loss, don't take it personally, don't spend time and money chasing after a national government trying to prove a conspiracy theory. It cannot end well for you. Of course your advisers will say it is worth having a go, presuming they are getting paid, or presuming they have a marketing budget and stand to gain fame and publicity if they could somehow pull something out of the bag and get a 'settlement' out of the government. If RAB can keep paying the retainer fees for their lawyers, fine, good for them. But surely you personally can't afford the retainer fees for the sort of top lawyers who can out lawyer the government? Where is your bottomless funding coming from? What does your other half think of this fruitless chase? I would give it up while I still had my sanity.

Mr Miliband has failed so far to respond, unsurprisingly.
His party let down the 'little people' and they will not be elected now.

.
I don't think 150,000 people who misunderstood the risks of their bank stocks are singlehandedly responsible for whether Miliband has a good or bad election campaign. Based on exit polls, Labour is not going to be the biggest party by next week.But bank shareholders are typically not the kind of blue collar grass roots pro-union factory workers that the Labour party counts amongst their core support.

Our valid concerns will be raised elsewhere, of course.

With apologies for being petty in the name of good humour: are you dropping all the invalid ones then?

I would have thought that on a site like this 'money saving expert' you would all be concerned for the little shareholder robbed by the powerful Government; nimby?

As mentioned, we get plenty of crackpots saying they were fiddled out of this or screwed out of that by a big bank or insurance company or pensions firm or political party or employer who missold them something as part of a conspiracy to profit from their downfall. One learns to take it with a pinch of salt when someone cries 'mis-sale' or 'X organisation has been unfair and I was not aware of these risks' or 'government and fatcats stole my lunch money'.

I am sure there is some nimbyism - if I don't plan to invest in an overleveraged bank which relies on state support then I don't care too much whether that state support is unlimited and free flowing or very restrictive, but generally it is better for me if it is restricted because it saves me tax pounds, unless the unlimited support delivers better overall national growth.

Meanwhile if someone else's back yard appears to have a better environment for being a bank shareholder - whether that's USA or France or Russia or wherever - then you could always go over there, buy into their banks, and see how you get on in their next credit crunch.

fiesta04

I hope Just Another Saver has noticed how this thread has progressed. JAS was nine lives in one of his previous lives.


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