Northern Rock Share Discussion Threads

[miata] 04/3/2009 07:32

Northern Rock results reveal £1.2bn paid to Government in fees
Nationalised bank Northern Rock, which suffered losses of £1.36bn last year, paid more than £1.2bn in interest and fees on its borrowings from the taxpayer.


By Peter Taylor and Philip Aldrick
Last Updated: 6:23AM GMT 04 Mar 2009

Former shareholders, who are seeking compensation, are likely to seize upon the figures to argue that the Government is overstating the extent the failed lender's losses.

[diydan] 03/3/2009 14:47

Many of us on here said last feb NR would pay back all the money in 2 years. But HMG said no it could not and confiscated the company from holders.

If one remembers the then management (Feb 08 appointed by HMG) put forward a buyout proposal to HMG on those very lines and where told no deal as it was not a realistic proposal. Well I think the facts speak for themselves as to who is correct.

While one could say hindsight is a gift foresight is inteligence?

[onsider] 03/3/2009 14:17

So NRK have paid back 18Billion to the Government in the first year? Assuming that they continue at this rate, then it is safe to say that they could have potentially repaid every penny back within 18 months, so by August/September of THIS YEAR...

No wonder HMG wants them to slow down repayments. This just goes to show what a conn this entire fiasco has been.

[miata] 03/3/2009 14:01

Adam Applegarth, the disgraced former chief executive of Northern Rock, has received a £109,000 pension top-up from the taxpayer-funded bank in addition to his existing severance arrangements agreed more than a year ago, it emerged today.

Evidence that taxpayers are having to pay out additional money to secure his future pension of £305,000 a year is likely to be controversial in the light of the row over Sir Fred Goodwin's pension.

State-owned Northern Rock confirmed today that the pension top-up was new money in addition to severance payments of £1.16 million announced a year ago.

"This is an additional contribution to his pension," a Northern Rock spokesman said, adding that it was a contractual right.
The state-owned bank also revealed that because Mr Applegarth had failed to get a new job, it had had to pay his is full severance entitlement, which amounted to £732,000 in 2008.

The bank would have been allowed to reduce its monthly payments to Mr Applegarth had he secured any paid employment paying a salary of more than £20,000.

Mr Applegarth, who is 46, is entitled to retire on a £305,000 a year pension from the age of 60, a benefit with the equivalent lump-sum value today of £2.6 million. He can choose to retire early at 55, but would have his entitlement reduced.

Northern Rock had no immediate explanation for the extra pension payment. It was not clear whether it would boost his actual pension or whether is was a top up to the fund to ensure it could meet past promises in the light of the slide in investment market

[diydan] 02/3/2009 11:40

bryan2 - 23 Feb'09 - 08:57 - 1371 of 1374

I could not agree more with you post. Many of us on here said last feb NR would pay back all the money in 2 years. But HMG said no it could not and confiscated the company from holders.

If one remembers the then management (Feb 08 appointed by HMG) put forward a buyout proposal to HMG on those very lines and where told no deal as it was not a realistic proposal. Well I think the facts speak for themselves as to who is correct.

While one could say hindsight is a gift foresight is inteligence?

[qantas] 01/3/2009 21:34

FUNDS NEEDED TO CONTINUE THE FIGHT FOR FAIR COMPENSATION




The judicial review decision on Northern Rock went against the claimants in the High Court. It was declared that there was no infringement of your "Human Rights" by the Government ensuring you will get no compensation. Permission to appeal was granted by the Court however, and it is our intention to support such an appeal, as will SRM Global and RAB Capital who were parties to the original action.

We are advised that there are good grounds to appeal. More comments on the current position are given overleaf. But we do need to raise additional funds to progress this matter.

If this judgment is allowed to stand then any company that accepts funding from the Government should bear in mind that the Government can nationalise the company and pay no compensation to shareholders. The implications for banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland, and Lloyds Banking Group are obvious, but the ramifications could be very widespread.

The basic principle that when the state confiscates the property of someone, they should pay fair compensation is being undermined. That compensation should be determined by an independent valuer, using normal terms of reference for commercial valuations, and not the rigged and biased conditions set by the Government in this case.

We do need your further financial support to enable us to continue with this campaign and take the matter to the higher courts.

Note that more details of the issues raised by the JR judgement are present in the pdf version of this newsletter which you can obtain by clicking on the link in the left hand tab.


(Picture above is of the demonstration outside the High Court during the judicial review).
£100,000 Target
As you can see from the financial report (www.uksa.org.uk/Finance_Report_Feb2009.pdf ) we have just issued, we have already raised over £250,000 for this campaign, but we need to raise another £100,000 to cover our prospective costs going forward. Please use the donation page on our web site (www.uksapay.org.uk/donation.cfm ) to send us the required funds so that you don't have to accept the pittance that you will otherwise get from the Government's compensation scheme. What you contribute is up to you, but to meet our target we probably need an additional £10 from past contributors as a minimum. If you have not previously donated, then this would of course be an opportune moment to do so.

Roger Lawson
Chairman, Northern Rock Shareholders Action Group
Email: [e-mail]
Direct telephone: [phone]

[qantas] 01/3/2009 21:15

Hedge fund thinks bank slide is overTop investor netted £100m from Barclays sell-off


Simon Bowers
The Observer, Sunday 1 March 2009
Article history
Lansdowne Partners, one of Mayfair's largest and most successful hedge funds, has taken £100m in profits from short-selling shares in Barclays and has told its investors it now believes the British banking sector is undervalued.

The fund is understood to have been short-selling Barclays shares - betting on a fall in its share price - for about two years. But it has now cashed in that short position, marking the end of the fund manager's negative view on the bank. Barclays shares peaked at close to 800p in early 2007 and dropped to a five-year low of 60p a month ago.

The move is also thought to be part of a wider strategic push by Lansdowne, calling the bottom of the market in British bank and housebuilding stocks - two sectors where share prices have crashed hardest since the credit crunch began.

Until a flurry of trades at the end of the year, Lansdowne funds had held very successful short positions in both banks and housebuilders in 2007 and 2008. The change of tack will be one of the most closely watched investment decisions in the market.

Co-founded by Conservative Party donor Paul Ruddock, Lansdowne attracted controversy after it emerged it had made an estimated £100m from the demise of Northern Rock. The firm bet the bank had been overvalued at least two years before its downfall, a position that for much of its life showed paper losses running into millions of pounds, before turning profitable as Northern Rock sank into financial meltdown.

Other lucrative Lansdowne "shorts" that have been closed included a substantial position in HBOS, which came to light during the bank's troubled rights issue last summer. It was diluted and sold before the lender was forced to accept a government-brokered rescue takeover bid from Lloyds TSB.

Lansdowne also took a negative view on Allied Irish Bank, which has been forced to seek rescue funding from the Irish government. The fund cut its short position in the bank by more than 50% last month, making profits estimated to run into tens of millions of euros.

Despite these successful short bets on bank stocks, Lansdowne managers last year failed to trigger the kind of huge management fees for which hedge funds are famous. The shine was taken off the funds' performances as investments in a number of companies, most notably in mining firms such as BHP Billiton, proved to be very poor decisions.

Overall, the group's funds finished broadly flat for 2008 with its largest fund, UK Equities, the best performer, up 0.5%. But there were no performance fees for star fund managers such as Peter Davies, who runs UK Equities, or William De Winton, who runs Landsdowne Global Financials. The performance was nevertheless extremely credible when benchmarked against the FTSE 100, which fell 31% in the year, or against most hedge fund peers, many of which have been pushed out of business.

Lansdowne still feels there could be further share price falls for other sectors. This month it was force to disclose short positions in commercial property firms Land Securities and British Land, representing 1.78% and 4% of the companies' shares respectively.

Short-seller behind the Tories
Lansdowne founding partner Paul Ruddock is one of the most prominent supporters of the Conservative party, having donated £260,000 to its coffers. It is sufficient to secure him membership of David Cameron's 100-strong elite donors club, the Leaders Group, without denting his estimated £350m personal fortune.

A stellar Oxford law graduate, like many in Cameron's circle he went on to work in the City, first for Goldman Sachs and then for Schroders, before jointly setting up Lansdowne Partners in 1998, where he became chief executive.

Lansdowne's offices are in the heart of the Mayfair hedge-fund district, just off Berkeley Square, while Ruddock has made his home a short stroll away, across Kensington Gardens in a pocket of Notting Hill called Lansdowne.

He made much of his fortune just over two years ago when, together with other partners, he sold close to 20% of Lansdowne to Morgan Stanley for £300m. Much of the proceeds are said to have gone back into the fund.

In earlier years, Lansdowne was better known for returns made on shrewd investments in companies such as Tesco and Manchester United but, like many hedge funds, it has recently come under fire from critics of short-selling.

Last month, Cameron said: "People might not follow the minutiae of over-leveraging or short-selling, but they know that the roots of our crisis lie in recklessness and greed."

[scribbler101] 27/2/2009 09:29

I've never seen that side of Him.

[greycioud] 26/2/2009 13:38

Scribbler

Universal has posted the same on several threads. Its tedious.

[scribbler101] 26/2/2009 10:46

For Fergus Allan's sake.

[onsider] 26/2/2009 09:44

Ah, Ekuuleus has being doing that all week, seems to have some point to make about people cross posting between threads.

If that's their biggest worry in life then they need to get a life.

Please filter me for whatever reason you feel is appropriate Ekuuleus....

[scribbler101] 26/2/2009 00:58

ekuu - why do you object to universal's obviously relevent post?

[theuniversal] 25/2/2009 18:49

ps: forgot to mention this ,you may have already read it but for those who might of missed it this could be relavent. about the FSA.



hope this is helpfull to all... TU

[ekuuleus] 25/2/2009 12:59

also filtered for spamming

theuniversal

what is it with filling loads of threads up?

[hvs] 24/2/2009 12:45

Its compensations for POLITICIANS they have a LIFE .

[theuniversal] 24/2/2009 12:35

worth a read, to do with the governments underhanded tatic's on compensation

[theuniversal] 24/2/2009 12:34

opps sorry it doubled up on the tread

[theuniversal] 24/2/2009 12:33

worth a read, to do with the governments underhanded tatic's on compensation

[theuniversal] 24/2/2009 12:33

worth a read, to do with the governments underhanded tatic's on compensation