I wanted to give you a brief update as to how the campaign for compensation is going (yes, it still is going!).
As some of you will know I have been on the committee and involved in the fight since the shares were taken from us in March 2008, and acted as the lead-plaintiff for us in the Court hearings, one at the Judicial Review, one at the Appeal Court (both disappointing to say the least) and, of course - the most disappointing of all - the rejection of our case as ‘inadmissible’ by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
Nevertheless, with a committee although now much reduced in numbers, but not in quality, we soldier-on still to try and achieve what we all know to be just, a fair compensation for our losses.
My colleagues on the committee are:-
Pradeep Chand – retired Group Finance Director with multi sector experience in large global enterprises.
Bill Penman Brown – lifetime career at the highest level in International banking, broadcaster and author (may I very strongly recommend to you his book “The Decline and Fall of Banking”, especially the N Rock chapters).
Brian Peart – Industrialist. 5yrs. on the main Board of UKSA, and 20 years as President of the NE Region of UKSA.
May I also just pay tribute to all those volunteers who served on this committee over the last 10 years, working hard to try to get justice for us all; may I mention and thank on your behalf Chris Hulme, our previous Chairman.
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I know from talking to so many shareholders that a lot of people have more or less given up the fight, and that is entirely understandable, given the long period involved. Heads naturally dropped when the EctHR ruling was announced, but life continues and as we now can see all too clearly the proof that the Government (via NRAM) stands to pocket a huge profit from their handling of the Rock – at our expense – as we always said was the case.
Something approaching £9Bn profit – after the Rock repaid all loans with penal interest – now accruing to HMG to us constitutes “undue enrichment”.
It is for us surely absolutely fair that some of that huge profit should be returned to the owners – who, after all, owned the assets which created it (“embedded value of the company”) but had them forcibly removed for NIL – whilst other bank shareholders were treated so differently.
We are close to finalising our submission to Government for a review of the handling, how we lost out, and how we feel it would be fully justified for us to now be treated fairly and compensated.
I will update this site with more news when I have it.
However, in the meantime, please be assured we have NOT given up the struggle, and will fight on for justice – however long it takes.
Thank you,
Dennis Grainger
Chairman of (UKSA) NRock Small Shareholders sub-committee
