I wrote the blog below in September 2011. Today’s news that Eric Daniels now feels he can sue Lloyds Banking Group for lost bonuses has not improved my view of him. Mr Daniels was a spectacularly unsuccessful bank CEO. A friend of mine said the HBOS /Lloyds bankers were paid a fortune to “fail with vigour.” My friend was right and Mr Daniels was a classic example. The fact he believes he is entitled to even more money is offensive to the Bank’s shareholders, it;s customers, to the thousands of staff who lost their jobs, to the victims of #HBOS Reading who Eric not only ignored but in some cases persecuted, and to the whole Country. Shame on you Mr Daniels. 22/08/17

Original blog of 26/09/2011

Some may say my various tweets on Saturday (24^th September) about Eric Daniels were a bit harsh or that I have been indulging in what has reportedly become a common pastime in the UK, banker bashing. But I have good reason to feel Mr Daniels should not be allowed to cock this last snoop at the British taxpayer or at me.

I do remember 2009, when Eric Daniels became head of HBOS as well as Lloyds. I remember thinking that finally, the victims of HBOS Reading would get a fair hearing and a resolution because obviously, the management of Lloyds would want to clear up such an unwholesome mess. Not so.

I wrote to Mr Daniels on several occasions and those people who replied on his behalf (he never replied personally), simply said that, as far as Mr Daniels was concerned, the issue of HBOS Reading had been dealt with, there was no fraud and the Bank did not intend to correspond further. They are still corresponding now, over two years later and our last letter came from Harry Baines, General Counsel for HBOS and now Lloyds Banking Group, in July 2011. His variation on a theme was the matter has been well ‘ventilated’ and that’s the end of it.

The serious question this behaviour poses is not just as to why Mr Daniels, or anyone else for that matter, would be happy to see business banking clients left in such a sorry state having been defrauded by bank employees but rather; why would the CEO of a bank ignore evidence of criminality and allow the situation to progress to a full scale police investigation which could only be detrimental to the bank and its shareholders?

I’m fully aware that banks get hundreds if not thousands of complaints on a daily basis and they  very often deal with them using the ‘delay, deny, dilute’ tactic. But, I truly believe in this instance it was absolute madness and totally negligent to repeatedly ignore complaints about HBOS Reading and even when:

1. Several MPs were asking for a resolution on behalf of Constituents.
2. The HBOS Reading scandal was the subject of a File on 4 broadcast.
3. MPs had a Debate at Westminster on 2^nd June 2009 and James Paice MP even used Parliamentary Privilege to expose some of the unwholesome details (documented on Hansard).
4. The FSA did a Section 166 Review which progressed to a Section 168 Investigation.

What part of the list above would allow the CEO of any business to think this was a matter that could simply be swept under the carpet and denied? At what point did Mr Daniels think the best way forward was to ignore the victims or, in our case, to proceed with trying to evict us from our home 22 times so that we could not continue our investigation into the fraud? Leaving aside integrity or even decency, has Mr Daniels never heard of damage limitation?

And the end result of pretending the HBOS Reading fraud never happened is Thames Valley Police and SOCA are now into their second year of ‘Operation Hornet’, the full scale investigation into what really happened at HBOS Reading. 8 people including 2 bankers have been arrested so far – which suggests that while Mr Daniels has not taken this matter seriously, the police have.

That cannot be good for the reputation of HBOS, Lloyds Banking Group or any of the senior executives, past or present, of HBOS or Lloyds who have refused to deal with the matter. Surely it is the responsibility of these people, who are paid vast amounts of money, to make make sure that a) major frauds do not happen in the Bank and b) when something does go horribly wrong, it is dealt with quickly, fairly and efficiently. But that has not happened – not under Andy Hornby nor Peter Cummings nor Eric Daniels. More importantly, anything detrimental to the Bank’s reputation, is not good for the shareholders which, in this case, means the Country. We have all seen Lloyds share price drop from pounds to pennies – while pay and bonuses for the top bankers have gone from thousands to millions. For what? For running the banks into the ground?

To make matters worse and even more confusing, Mr Daniels was in charge when the false bank account in the name of Zenith Cafe Ltd was being debited. I have already blogged about this but I forgot to add a vital point. While the Bank are busy convincing the FSA this is an ‘internal’ account which our company was never going to be asked to repay, we have the letters demanding repayment and telling us we must stick to the overdraft limit – which is of course zero as you can’t negotiate an overdraft for an account you don’t know about.

Presumably Mr Daniels would say he didn’t know about the account. He would be oblivious to the fact Zenith Cafe appears to owe the Bank approx. £630,000 – £200,000 of which was to pay the Bank’s lawyers to be involved with 5 of our eviction hearings when they weren’t instructed in that matter.

But even the FSA are now saying they are taking this matter very seriously because it simply isn’t possible to add approximately £250,000 worth of interest and charges (going up at £11,000+ per month) to a £372,000 debt for their legal fees and come out with a £600,000+ credit which is explained away as an ‘internal’ matter. So maybe, as CEO, Mr Daniels should have known about it so he could have asked the question – who authorised it? And how many other fake accounts were/are manipulating the Bank’s loan book? What impact is this or other ‘internal’ accounts having on the P&L? Or did this well paid now ex CEO have no idea what was happening on  his watch?

This morning I was reading an old letter from a Mr Godfrey at the Bank on behalf of Mr Daniels. It says – over and above the usual, “we’ve dealt with this so go away” – that the Bank is fully aware of our level of indebtedness. Maybe they were – but I certainly wasn’t as I knew nothing about the account for the first 18 months after the Bank created it! And I’m wondering now if my other company, Zenith Publishing Ltd, also has a false account attributed to it and how much does that one show as owing to the Bank?

Many people would say the ‘fantastic’ deal Mr Daniels and friends did when they merged a good or at least functioning bank, Lloyds, with a basket case, HBOS, caused thousands of people to lose a fortune. Not the kind of fortune top bankers or Corporate CEOs make in bonuses but the few thousand pounds a lot of people thought they were going to get annually as a pension when they retired – or the reasonable wage they made before thousands were made redundant when the Bank had to off load staff to increase profits – or the comfortable nest egg they had which meant they could afford a reasonable lifestyle. So many people’s lives changed thanks to the Lloyds/HBOS merger and even more lives have changed thanks to the overall bank bailouts.

I think we are all entitled to question why so many of the people who caused economic catastrophe have been so handsomely rewarded?

We are entitled to ask why people who have possibly broken the law, are not being prosecuted?

We are entitled to ask why people who have breached FSMA 2000, who have acted with little or no integrity and who have caused damage to our banking system via their negligence, have not been struck off as directors?

Personally I would ask why the ex CEO of Lloyds Banking Group was able to; totally ignore the evidence he was sent of a major fraud which has resulted in a major police investigation that is detrimental to the bank ; allow and even authorise the malicious persecution of the victims of the fraud; allow a false account to be operated in the name of a victim’s company (when false accounting is a criminal offence); and why should he walk away with £5 million pounds?

It doesn’t make any sense to me and I’m deeply disappointed UKFI, our Government and our regulators seem unable to understand how offensive this pay off is to the majority of the British people. This is not about banker bashing – it’s just logic and I imagine the 43,000 people who have lost or are losing their jobs at Lloyds, will also be wondering about  the logic of them all ending up with nothing when the man in charge of the disastrous merger, can get so much?

Maybe, on a personal level, Mr Daniels is a good man – I wouldn’t know. But in my view, he isn’t a good business man and I cannot understand why a bank that is 41% owned by the state, is paying him £5M? Or why he has been getting £3,333 a day since last March for doing nothing?  Or is the  implication, it was costing us much more than that when Mr Daniels was doing ‘something’?

I’m inclined to think it was. He has cost this Nation a fortune – and now his pension from the part state owned bank he was instrumental in ruining, will keep paying him a fortune every year for the rest of his life.

Eric Daniels, Fred Goodwin, Peter Cummings – some might consider them to be three of the most successful bank robbers in British history. No horses, no getaway cars, no balaclava’s, no dynamite. How did they do it?