Sunday, Feb 28, 2010
Finally some justice?
Mail on sunday: Bankrupt grant bovey
Finally someone gets to feel the pain... imagine homes never ever made a profit despite a housing boom to end all housing booms and they took huge salaries and loans later waived by the company... looks like it's the second time as well, so why did hbos lend him tens or hundreds of millions? I imagine (no pun intended) he put the house in his wife's name.
Posted by taffee @ 08:36 AM (1597 views) Add Comment
18 Comments
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1. Exiges said...
What I find very fish is that they're now living in "her" house worth £6m, which can't be taken from them because the debts are in "his" name.. but they paid themselves £4.3m in bonuses. Hmm
Aren't the laws against putting assets beyond the of your creditors ?
2. markj69 str05 said...
Over sympathetic article IMO.
Bit like the Chilcot enquiry, no hard questions posed, and the interviewee aloud to put his view across in a 'no-pressure' environment. 'Reputation repair mode', before he gets a total slating.
Did he accept responibility, or was he suggesting it was all the banks fault? - 'In fact, the more the company grew, the more I was coming under pressure from them to expand more quickly.’
Give it a few years and he'll probably on for a hatrick.
3. paul said...
The hardest thing, harder even than facing Anthea, was telling Lily. I didn’t want her to read about it in the newspapers or hear it as gossip, so I sat her down and explained everything. I felt terrible.
‘She and her two sisters, Amelia and Claudia, look up to me as their hero. All daughters put their father on a pedestal, so it felt like I’d let them down.
Won't someone please just think about the children? etc.
Is this a good time to quote him from April 2008?
"I am sitting in our EUR6million [£5million] chateau in Megeve in the Alps right now. I will sue anyone who says that Imagine Homes is in financial difficulty. We are 20 per cent owned by HBOS and we have huge profits that have yet to materialise.
"We have huge tower blocks in Canary Wharf and various other sites that will generate huge amounts of money. These developments sold out 18 months ago. They are all sold so we're in a very fortunate position."
4. taffee said...
imagine homes business plan seems like a joke to me.....buy property from developers sell to gullible investors and charge lunatic rents for 2 years based on 15% of the purchase price
Imagine going to your local bank manager with that plan...he'd probably call the police!
5. tenyearstogetmymoneyback said...
Interesting quote from him
Grant insists that the blame must be shared with HBOS. ‘Of the eight people on the board, three were appointed by HBOS,’ he said. ‘If anyone was greedy it was the bank, who just kept encouraging me to grow
Taffee said "Imagine going to your local bank manager with that plan...he'd probably call the police"
Duncan says "Imagine going to HBOS with that plan in 2004. They would probably ask if you wanted
more money than you had calculated".
People saw this coming in 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3478635.stm.
I sold my HBOS shares the next day.
6. taffee said...
too true...robert peston was writing about the poor business model of northern rock and hpuss in 2003
ignored of course
7. nomad said...
Three bank appointed directors - there to ensure the acceleration of bank bonuses by persuading the company to shoot for the stars.
8. a saver said...
Outragoeusly sympathetic I'd say.
Never mind how hard it was on his ego/children/relationship, what about all the people who are owed money by him and his company and will be wiped out by his bankruptcy? If you are a skilled business person investing in high-value assets you have to do your research so you can buy and sell at the right time. Anyone who invested in property after 2004 was playing with fire but they got lucky for a few years, thanks to our government deliberately inflating the property bubble. There's been plenty of time to get out with a big bag of dosh.
9. markj69 str05 said...
Negligence and Incompetence. Property tycoons, Bankers and Gov't.
There needs to be more accountability, from all quarters. Heads MUST roll, and Bovey is just one of the small fry.
Never before have so many been SHAFTED by so few!
Banks are profit making organisations, and in more recent years the bonus culture grown to uncontrollable levels, we know where their interest lay. They needed regulation. They need regulation. Nothing has changed. Expect more of the same until there is a huge shift in the way we manage the finances in this 'not so' Great country we now live in.
The paracites must be removed.
10. greenshootsandleaves said...
'Not that the couple, married for ten years next August, are exactly on skid row. Yes, Grant is, in his eyes at least, broke. But, as he is anxious to point out, this has nothing to do with Anthea. Indeed, she is completely solvent, having never been a director in her husband’s companies'
Nothing to do with Anthea? I must have imagined the bit about how generously she was paid for her advice on carpets and curtain materials or whatever by a company he would, should or ought to have known was already on the skids. You can just picture the scene where wee grant reveals to a startled Anthea that the company (... wait for it ...) couldn't really afford her services after all, but not to worry, she will be paid in full, he'll see to that.
PS 'It is no secret that the Boveys (...) have had to *reign* in their lavish lifestyle'.
Perhaps the DM should refrain from criticising the PM's spelling.
11. gone-to-colombia said...
that's one scum bag out of the way, roll on the wilsons
12. rumble said...
"Never before have so many been SHAFTED by so few!" Possible due to massive power imbalance of centralised authority. Consider p2p, torrents.
13. markj69 str05 said...
@rumble 11... You're implying that centralised authority(Gov't) has control. I doubt that very much! I doubt they have had control of the financial sector for the last decade. I doubt they know even what to control, and how to do it. I doubt they have the balls to take control, we see that with the bankers bonuses.
14. britishblue said...
Going bancrupt is like getting a bonus for someone like Grant Bovey.
All the stuff about his daughters is just well controlled PR to create sympathy. His wife is probably being paid by the newspaper for the exclusive. Going bancrupt means that Grant Bovey will have all his millions of pounds of debts wiped out and then in 12 short months will be able to start all over again. Given the type of business he is in, the couples celebrity style status and personal and business network this wont be a problem.
What is means is:
a. All assets will be in Antheas name (house, car, other funds, etc)
b. All 'their' debts will be in his name and be wiped
c. Any earmnings he make this year will be invoiced by Anthea
d. He will be marketing himself as an entrepreneur without any financail baggage.
I would be hugely surprised if he doesnt have a multi million pound investment behind him in 12 months time to launch a new business enterprise.
15. mark wadsworth said...
I don't want to laugh at other people's misfortune, but for people like this I'll make an exception.
16. greenshootsandleaves said...
mw @14 (06:47)
'misfortune'? If you can live with the shame and opprobrium (and I've no doubt he can!) it's not a bad deal at all. A comfortable existence, deciding whether to accept the latest invite from a tv reality show (better make the cheque payable to Mrs b), ....
17. tenant super said...
Giving away assets to avoid them being included in a bankruptcy is considered "unfit conduct". Hopefully Bovey will be found guilty of unfit conduct which can give rise to a bankruptcy restriction order that can make bankruptcy last for between two and fifteen years rather than being discharged after twelve months. However, more likely his legal and financial advisors have found ways around...
18. rumble said...
12. rumble said...
"Never before have so many been SHAFTED by so few!" Possible due to massive power imbalance of centralised authority. Consider p2p, torrents.
13. markj69 str05 said...
@rumble 11... You're implying that centralised authority(Gov't) has control. I doubt that very much! I doubt they have had control of the financial sector for the last decade. I doubt they know even what to control, and how to do it. I doubt they have the balls to take control, we see that with the bankers bonuses.
Sunday, February 28, 2010 04:11PM
You doubt a lot - do you have anything more substantial than your doubting? Government is a central authority. Rule by proxy, ie banks via government, is coercion of the central authority (therefore deceptively represented to the voting public) by pressure groups, and simply another example of the problem with a central authority. The question is not whether government has the balls, but whether it has the interest. Public against the war, pm says we're going; public against the banks, pm says we're buying them. That is an imbalance of power. As you mention, public against bonuses... A central authority is a single point of failure - when it stuffs up, the whole country suffers.