Share Holders Deserve Little

BaboonCsection

Anyone else see this today on breaking news

http://breakingnews.ie/business/aib-shareholders-board-should-be-replaced-by-mickey-mouse-410606.html

I have very little sympathy with Gary Keogh and to be honest he and people like him are as much to blame for their economic woes as any banker. He played the stock market and lost. Too bad. There is no such thing as a sure investment and I am sure he reaped in big money during the heady days of 'Celtic Tiger' Ireland. Suddenly the markets correct to reflect a truer value of shares in AIB and he is crying foul to all and sundry. Perhaps if everybody took more responsibility for their actions and investments, the markets would never have been artificially inflated to this extent and then the come down would not be so hard.

In the incredibly minute chance that Mr Keogh is reading this, you reap what you sow and perhaps. Ironically if the banks were aloud the recapitialise naturally through repossession, the credit crunch would not have hit the banks so badly and the shares may not have been as susceptible to collapse. Remember that when you trawl through repossession legislation in a bid to keep a hold of your home.

mike65

Dermot Gleesons' son?

BaboonCsection

I enjoy a public lynching as much as the next man, even uncle Dermot's, but I can't stand the total victim syndrome of those who have made and subsequently lost money through the stock market.

astrofool

BaboonCsection wrote: »

I enjoy a public lynching as much as the next man, even uncle Dermot's, but I can't stand the total victim syndrome of those who have made and subsequently lost money through the stock market.

The problems came from the advice the banks were giving, and hailing themselves as experts, without informing the customers of the true risks. They put a lot of money in stable assets (from a short history point of view), and when these assets dropped, they were screwed.

People of course should never put their money into something where they don't know the risk (or too stupid to understand the risk when it comes to money needed to survive daily).

jmayo

BaboonCsection wrote: »

Anyone else see this today on breaking news

http://breakingnews.ie/business/aib-shareholders-board-should-be-replaced-by-mickey-mouse-410606.html

I have very little sympathy with Gary Keogh and to be honest he and people like him are as much to blame for their economic woes as any banker. He played the stock market and lost. Too bad. There is no such thing as a sure investment and I am sure he reaped in big money during the heady days of 'Celtic Tiger' Ireland. Suddenly the markets correct to reflect a truer value of shares in AIB and he is crying foul to all and sundry. Perhaps if everybody took more responsibility for their actions and investments, the markets would never have been artificially inflated to this extent and then the come down would not be so hard.

In the incredibly minute chance that Mr Keogh is reading this, you reap what you sow and perhaps. Ironically if the banks were aloud the recapitialise naturally through repossession, the credit crunch would not have hit the banks so badly and the shares may not have been as susceptible to collapse. Remember that when you trawl through repossession legislation in a bid to keep a hold of your home.

Yes you could say that they shoudl have pulled out as the shares started to slide, cut your losses etc.
It is what makes sense but people, particularly the elderly, probably had the mindset that your money was safe being invested in the big banks.

You can't realistically believe that the current shareprice is a truer value of our major banks (I am looking at it long term over 30 years for example), with the market penetration, long term profitablity and size of these institutions ?
BTW I am not including Anglo in this, they grew very fast and now we know why.

Even if you don't have sympathy for the shareholders, it is very worrying if companies (which are a major portion of the Irish stock exchange) are so badly run that they are affectively now shells of their former selves.
Also in most countries the insider trading or artifical inflation of share price through funding of bank share/option purchases via bank loans, hiding director loans and rent a deposit schemes would land people in jail.
If this was in the states there would be class actions flying left right and centre.
Here of course they sail off into the sunset.

These schenanagins send out a very worrying signal to all investors in the Irish stock exchange and like them or loathe them you need people to invest in our publicly traded companies.
Another point is that sizeable amounts of pension funds were tied up in these companies because they were seen as blue chip in Irish terms. That means huge amounts wipe off pension funds.

What makes this whole scenario even worse is that these companies cannot be allowed go bust, becuase they are instrinically systemic importance to the Irish economy and the vast majority of our businesses and citizens.
Thus no matter how much of a cock up they have made, they have to be bailed out.

There is no way anybody can excuse the recklessness of the upper levels of management and the boards within our major financial institutions.
Why some of these people are still in positions of power is beyond me and that fact has probably not gone unnoticed internationally.
BTW see current head of BOI as prime example.

These people have probably destroyed our economy and have made it harder for viable well run companies to obtain investment.

cavedave

Has Gary Keogh asked for your sympathy? He is angry that people he trusted he feels acted incompetently that is his concern. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my bones. He appears not to be wandering round with a begging bowl demanding a hand out.

How much sympathy do you have for the banks who are actively taking money off you? And what are you going to do about your feelings?

Dabko

sorry to but in but does anyone know where one could see pictures or view video footage of the egg throwing fiasco?:D

jmayo

Check www.rte.ie or the business section of www.bbc.co.uk
Both have it.

Must say the security guy who responded "that he likes chickens" when Keogh was asked why he did comes across as muppet :rolleyes:
It's at times like that you keep your mouth firmly shut.

He claimed that he did because he couldn't throw his shoes.

Belfast

BaboonCsection wrote: »

Anyone else see this today on breaking news

http://breakingnews.ie/business/aib-shareholders-board-should-be-replaced-by-mickey-mouse-410606.html

I have very little sympathy with Gary Keogh and to be honest he and people like him are as much to blame for their economic woes as any banker. He played the stock market and lost. Too bad. There is no such thing as a sure investment and I am sure he reaped in big money during the heady days of 'Celtic Tiger' Ireland. Suddenly the markets correct to reflect a truer value of shares in AIB and he is crying foul to all and sundry. Perhaps if everybody took more responsibility for their actions and investments, the markets would never have been artificially inflated to this extent and then the come down would not be so hard.

In the incredibly minute chance that Mr Keogh is reading this, you reap what you sow and perhaps. Ironically if the banks were aloud the recapitialise naturally through repossession, the credit crunch would not have hit the banks so badly and the shares may not have been as susceptible to collapse. Remember that when you trawl through repossession legislation in a bid to keep a hold of your home.

I do not fell sorry for the shareholders. None of them were protesting when big profits were being made from risk banking.
The only complained when the share price dropped and they stopped getting dividends.
It was no secret that the banks were loaning out silly amount of money biased on a property bubble.

BaboonCsection

cavedave wrote: »

How much sympathy do you have for the banks who are actively taking money off you? And what are you going to do about your feelings?

I have absolutely no sympathy for the banks, either as a collection of individual bankers or as an institution. I think it is a shame that more heads have not rolled and I fully understand the grievances that people have, I share most them. Banks were reckless at best and if an individual acted in the same manner they would be liable for financial fraud, not bail outs.

However my point about Gary Keogh is that he invested blindly and was happy to to reap the benefits of what were ludicrous banking activities that were never sustainable. If a person is to invest their entire pension in something, then they are obliged to take some responsibility. Yes he was badly advised but advice does not equate to a determinate course of action. Plenty of literature and economists (albeit they were in the minority of voices out there) predicted this and many people on the street foretold that the boom would never last. Whom did he think the victims of the bust would be? What compounds it is Mr. Keogh's complaints are not necessarily about the banks conduct, rather the fact that he has lost out due to said conduct. And that I think is the crux of the mentality that I dislike so much.

As for asking for my sympathies, I thought he was strongly positioning himself in the role of victim, perhaps I am wrong? My argument is that he was a willing victim of the outrageous methods AIB used to inflate their value, only finding these actions repressible now that that the arse has fallen out of it.

Incidentally jmayo, why can these banks not fail (a genuine question rather than a rhetorical point)? Rather than large tax payer bailouts, couldn't the government create a subsidiary, totally nationalised bank, and buy up any bank that is to go under, in its entirety, at more a equitable price than the bailouts? I am no economist (god knows!) but I have yet to hear a totally convincing arguments as to why these institutions can't fail if the government provide the right economic insulation.

jmayo

BaboonCsection wrote: »

...
Incidentally jmayo, why can these banks not fail (a genuine question rather than a rhetorical point)? Rather than large tax payer bailouts, couldn't the government create a subsidiary, totally nationalised bank, and buy up any bank that is to go under, in its entirety, at more a equitable price than the bailouts? I am no economist (god knows!) but I have yet to hear a totally convincing arguments as to why these institutions can't fail if the government provide the right economic insulation.

I do think Anglo should have been left fold.
It was not a major high street bank, was primarily involved in property and was not of systemic importance.
But for some reason, political I believe, it was saved supposedly against the wishes of other banks, central bank and dept of finance advise.
Yet minister and government included it.
Ditto with Nationwide.
IMHO NAMA looks like a way of postponing the inevitable for the developers who owe millions.

It would be scary to think what would happen if there was a run on AIB or BOI. The deposit guarantee would be called in,somehting which we can't afford anyway.
You would be going into the realms of the unknown, how would business be transacted while a new bank was being setup, etc.
I thgink they have us by the balls and they know it.
AIB used the same tactic in 1980s when ICI went bust, through some more mis-management, funny they have a fair amount of it down the years.
Remember Rusnak, he doesn't seem so bad now.

irish_bob

ive no more sympathy for someone who lost out on AIB shares than i do on someone who lost out big on the grand national , both are risk investments , i would obviously have great sympathy for someone if they lost savings

i myself lost a lot of money on an overseas property and the fact of the matter is i was a fool to have ever invested in it

spank_inferno

I've little sympathy for the shareholders either.
They know the risks and they know the game. Whether they are old or not is irrelevent.

The real problem is the 3.5 billion of my money given no qustions asked to AIB. Considering the government could have purchased the bank lock stock & barrell for a fraction of that, the real crime isnt their share price, its the bailout.

jimmmy

jmayo wrote: »

These schenanagins send out a very worrying signal to all investors in the Irish stock exchange and like them or loathe them you need people to invest in our publicly traded companies.
Another point is that sizeable amounts of pension funds were tied up in these companies because they were seen as blue chip in Irish terms. That means huge amounts wipe off pension funds.

True + well said. Many people have lost life savings in what they were told - even at school - were blue chip Irish shares. If nobody invested money in the Irish stock market where would we be ? I am sure the investors wished they did not invest their money in the Irish stock market anyway.

Daragh101

i have every bit of sympathy for that man, he was advised by "experts" to put his pension money into the banks!!!
the banks lied to sharehloders making them think there investment was safe and that the banks were in a healthy position.
people on here are saying that its his own fault for investing as it is a risk, and thats fine, but not when conservitive investors were been told by financial advisors that there is no risk with bank shares!!!

silverharp

jimmmy wrote: »

True + well said. Many people have lost life savings in what they were told - even at school - were blue chip Irish shares. If nobody invested money in the Irish stock market where would we be ? I am sure the investors wished they did not invest their money in the Irish stock market anyway.

You have to admit though very niave , even if you pick an investment book off the shelves in Easons , chapter 1 will always have something about diversification. The average long only buy and hold type guy should only be down 40%/50% in their equity position which again should only be a % of their investment pot.
Irish people should have diversified abroad in the same way that foreign investors will ave bought Irish shares via funds etc.

jmayo

I have noticed a number of poster seem to be coming at this from the screw them they were making good returns and so what if they lost their money, it is a risky investment and it's like gambling on the horses.
Basically that just looks like jealousy and begrudery.

We should all be concerned about the bank shares plummetting and I just don't mean because we now have to bail them out and save them.

It affects much more than the people who directly invested in the shares themselves.
It also affects pension funds, run by Insurance companies, that bought some of these shares because they were the blue chip ISEQ quoted companies.

That means that any ordinary Joe who never traded using a stockbroker is probably also affected.

The bank shareholders were let down by the management of the banks but also the regulatory authorities and that last part is what really worries me.
There were incidents of affectively insider trading and what has been done about it ?
If there is apparently no protection at all for investors then we are in very dangerous territory.
For anyone favouring the horse gambling analogy, it would be like no comeback if the horse doesn't race and most races are completly fixed.

Oh yeah the director of corporate enforcement is investigating.
I await another blacked out report 6 months down the road with no prosecutions :rolleyes:

An investment advisor guy was on radio yesterday and he advised people not to touch Irish stocks.
Does that not send out very worrying signals about the state of the Irish economy ?

4Sheets

I do Have sympathy for these shareholders particulary the older ones whos pensions are wiped out..they obviously didnt know or understand fully the risks..if someone said to you put all your pension money into these shares but theres a 50/50 chance you will lose everything would you do it?
These people where'nt playing the markets with a investment pool of spare cash..Im sure its very frightening to look at once secure future vanishing when you are that age and worked all your life to provide for your security..

silverharp

jmayo wrote: »

Does that not send out very worrying signals about the state of the Irish economy ?

indeed , taxpayers , people with pensions etc. should indeed be worried. Socially things are going to get uncomfortable and crime will rise..
All you can do as an individual is assume the gov. and special interests will continue to blow it and be surprised if they don't. That has been my working assumption for the last few years.

nesf

jmayo wrote: »

But for some reason, political I believe, it was saved supposedly against the wishes of other banks, central bank and dept of finance advise.

I've seen it argued and it has some merit that the justification behind it might have been a misguided wish to protect the entire system not just systematically important institutions. The idea being one bank failing will produce a domino effect and it being safer to save them all from this point of view.

I don't agree with the above reasoning, I think Anglo could have been left to disintegrate without bring down AIB or BoI but it's plausible as an alternative to the politically motivated theory.

fly_agaric

BaboonCsection wrote: »

Anyone else see this today on breaking news

http://breakingnews.ie/business/aib-shareholders-board-should-be-replaced-by-mickey-mouse-410606.html

I have very little sympathy with Gary Keogh and to be honest he and people like him are as much to blame for their economic woes as any banker. He played the stock market and lost. Too bad. There is no such thing as a sure investment and I am sure he reaped in big money during the heady days of 'Celtic Tiger' Ireland. Suddenly the markets correct to reflect a truer value of shares in AIB and he is crying foul to all and sundry. Perhaps if everybody took more responsibility for their actions and investments, the markets would never have been artificially inflated to this extent and then the come down would not be so hard.

I don't think the likes of Mr. Keogh were hunting for more growth, wheeling and dealing shares etc. One might have expected the banks to be a safe(r) stock which you could invest in to take the dividends regularly so investors who expected that (and could have been given advice to that effect??) have a right to their grievances imo.
As well as the share values plummeting, banks have stopped paying any dividends too.

BaboonCsection wrote: »

However my point about Gary Keogh is that he invested blindly and was happy to to reap the benefits of what were ludicrous banking activities that were never sustainable.

Easy to say in hindsight but if you're not an expert (or even an interested layman perhaps??) & have invested in something based on advice & money is coming in okay will you question it too much?