Bradford and Bingley Collapse

Malthusian

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Are you saying that you went and bought shares with the money in the kids accounts? If so, pay them back as it was you that screwed up not B&B or the administrator.

It may improve the OP's day to know that (assuming he did use the kids' cash to buy shares) he is not just morally but legally obliged to do exactly that, due to his failure to carry out his trustee duties as a prudent person of business would, and the loss that resulted.

Alternatively he could keep quiet and hope his kids never find out about the loss of their money. The first step would be to not run around the Internet advertising his rank incompetence.

Alternatively alternatively, maybe one of the kids has turned 18 and asked where all the money is that he said he'd been giving them, and this is what triggered this thread.

Malthusian

PS limited liability in its modern form was invented just over 200 years ago, although it is true that its introduction in the UK several decades later coincided with the railway bubble.

talexuser

londoninvestor wrote: »

You don't often hear it claimed that bank shareholders in 2008 were cheated by the taxpayer!

Except by the bankers! I read the original proposal by Hank Paulson in 2008 was that the banks immediately be given tax payers money with no stipulations about repayment! The Fed ended up spending over $7 trillion to prop up the system!

brasso

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Are you saying that you went and bought shares with the money in the kids accounts? If so, pay them back as it was you that screwed up not B&B or the administrator

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Not enough to prevent you foolishly putting all your kids money into a single share and then look for scapegoats.

I hate all this sneering you get on this forum. People can be so sanctimonious when passing judgement on the misfortune of others.

We've all become very wise after the event. This wasn't exactly a speculative punt. Buying shares in a major financial institution for kids/grandkids was seen as very sensible until 2008.

Malthusian

brasso wrote: »

People can be so sanctimonious when passing judgement on the misfortune of others.

No-one is being sanctimonious about the misfortune of the OP's kids. Sadly for them, they did not get any say in the choice of their trustee.

We've all become very wise after the event.

Only because the OP has only just asked us. If he'd carried out his legal obligations and bothered to ask someone whether he should stick all his kids' money in a single share before he did it, they'd have told him before the event that it was a stupid thing to do as well.

This wasn't exactly a speculative punt. Buying shares in a major financial institution for kids/grandkids was seen as very sensible until 2008.

Absolute nonsense.

Sticking all your money (worse, other peoples' money that you are trustee for) in a single share would be seen as idiotic by any prudent person of business in Dickens' era. And before then. History has been full of cautionary tales about putting all your money in a single business that is "too big to fail", ever since modern stockmarkets were open to the public.

Sticking all your money in a single share is an ultra high risk speculative punt regardless of what share it is.

Reed_Richards

Sometime in the mid 2000s my wife and I visited a friend of hers in Canada. This friend had a popular book on investments that advocated putting all you money into Canadian banking stocks as these had always done well and paid very good dividends. The thesis was that you could retire early and live off the dividends, Now Canadian banks were subject to tighter and more sensible regulation than those in the UK so I don't know how badly they suffered in the crash but my wife's friend is still working. I mention this to illustrate that many crashes are preceded by a bubble of enthusiasm and people get caught-up in this. In this instance I think people in the banking industry were more caught-up in an enthusiasm for risky investments than their shareholders, who thought they were investing in relatively safe stocks..

AnotherJoe

brasso wrote: »

We've all become very wise after the event. This wasn't exactly a speculative punt. Buying shares in a major financial institution for kids/grandkids was seen as very sensible until 2008.

He didn't just "buy some shares" he put all their money into one single company,.Putting all your money into any one company has never been seen as anything other than foolhardy. Never.

Even as a high risk investor I would never ever even imagine putting all my money into one single company however "relatively safe" (the OP's exact words) I thought it was. (because thats all you can know, your perception. And you have to understand your perception can be wrong). And thats my money, let alone doing it with my kids !

brasso wrote: »

I hate all this sneering you get on this forum. People can be so sanctimonious when passing judgement on the misfortune of others.

The OP is not the man on the Clapham omnibus with limited or zero financial knowledge bemoaning his fate, he's (apparently) and self admittedly

fully aware of the risk with shares

So he took a huge risk (just because it was one company), with all his kids money, which didn't pay off by high risk gambling on the stock market and then, as far as we know, didn't recompense his children for his misjudgement either (Or if he did never bothered to mention it)

I dont call it sanctimonious to call him out on that .

rr755507

brasso wrote: »

We've all become very wise after the event. This wasn't exactly a speculative punt. Buying shares in a major financial institution for kids/grandkids was seen as very sensible until 2008.

That was a textbox speculative punt! Just because people bought shares in a major financial institution before 2008 and made a ton of money doesn't mean it was ever safe, non-speculative or sensible.

Malthusian

Reed_Richards wrote: »

Sometime in the mid 2000s my wife and I visited a friend of hers in Canada. This friend had a popular book on investments that advocated putting all you money into Canadian banking stocks as these had always done well and paid very good dividends.

This is an excellent illustration of why you should never read any book on investments.

If you are lucky you will get one that contains the two sides of A4 a novice investor needs to know about investment, and the hundred pages of pointless padding to justify charging you £10+ won't be too misleading. If you are unlucky you get one of these.

. I mention this to illustrate that many crashes are preceded by a bubble of enthusiasm and people get caught-up in this.

This is very true, but when you accept trusteeship for someone else's money you are held to higher standards. "Everyone else was doing it" doesn't cover the legal duty to invest the beneficiary's money as a prudent person of business would.

Reed_Richards

Malthusian wrote: »

... but when you accept trusteeship for someone else's money you are held to higher standards. "Everyone else was doing it" doesn't cover the legal duty to invest the beneficiary's money as a prudent person of business would.

Are we talking about the OP or the managers of Bradford and Bingley (and many other financial institutions at that time)?