Lloyds shareholders to sue over HBOS non-disclosure

The Lloyds-shareholders are asking for a judicial review in the High Court about the takeover of HBOS last year.

There has been set up a private shareholder campaign group called Lloyds Action Now. This because there has come to light that the Bank of England has offered the British banks RBS and HBOS a large amount of money to finance their activities. This event happened 13 months ago, the same period that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and when Fortis had to be financially supported by the Belgian Government.

The shareholders are very angry that they knew nothing although certain interested parties did know what was going on. The Government, the chairman of Lloyds and the directors of HBOS knew about it and the Financial Services Authority and the Bank also knew all about it.

Alice Beer, the former BBC Watchdog presenter and now campaigning for shareholders, said: "The only people who didn't know were ordinary men and women whose savings were put at risk in order to secure this shabby deal."

The British bank governor Mervyn King stated Tuesday that if this deal did not came through it could have been much worse then it is today. That is why the Bank of England kept their activities secret, according to them the shareholders would have panicked and the whole market would have fall down.

In my opinion I think it is not fair that the shareholders knew nothing. What if there was a capital injection of the Bank of England but it had no influence? Then the shareholders would have lost all their money and Bank of England would have invested for nothing. After all it is the shareholders’ money and they have the only right to do with their money what they like. But on the other side I am happy that the capital injection turned out to be a success and that nobody lost money and the companies are doing fine.

Ruth Blommaert

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/6672692/Lloyds-shareholders-to-sue-over-HBOS-non-disclosure.html