Member Info for BasherSmith

You would be paid in either cash, or cash and shares, or all shares of the bidding company depending on the offer. If the bidder gets control of 51% of the shares they can force a sale of the rest at the offer price. We should be so lucky! I think that's right from memory.

Having said that I don't think CBG would be an easy company to take over because of the share distribution between the institutions and the small amount of shares in private hands. I think that's correct and I would love to be proved wrong. I'm guessing that it would take somewhere north of £10 to prise shares away from the institutions.

Taking a quick look at Starling it doesn't look like an obvious fit, but here's hoping. My money would be on Lloyds.

I picked this up from an AI query.

"Reasons a judicial review is unlikely to succeed

Legal precedent: A judicial review is limited to challenging procedural matters or whether the FCA acted beyond its legal powers. The August 2025 Supreme Court decision provided legal clarity, reinforcing the FCA's authority to establish a compensation scheme under the Consumer Credit Act.

Previous court rulings: The FCA's position has been strengthened by earlier favourable rulings, such as the High Court upholding a Financial Ombudsman Service decision against Clydesdale Financial Services in December 2024.

Reputational and financial risk: A prolonged legal fight could increase reputational damage and administrative costs, which would likely exceed the compensation payouts. The FCA has indicated that alternatives to its scheme would be more costly and take longer."

It aligns with the conclusion that I had come to that compensation is likely to be paid although I still regard this as a very unfair. I'm holding at two pounds and making a very large profit, this has been the best share I've ever invested in. At 435p with a TNAV over 900p it would be madness to sell, although I would like to move on to something else.

We've just had a 12.5% rise, which is very nice, but it would also be nice to know why sentiment has suddenly changed. One reason could be that because there are so few available shares (most shares being tied up by the institutions) that any kind of change of demand has a disproportionate effect on the share price. Or it could be something else. As usual we will be the last to know.

Heard the Dentons podcast - thanks Liberty. It seems to assume that the FCA scheme will go through in some form and they were presenting themselves as people who would be able to help management to negotiate the legal complexity. I doubt they would have put so much effort into it unless they were expecting some kind of reward.

My belief is that the scheme will be greatly modified and toned down and the lenders would be foolish to accept it as it is without putting up a fight . We'll see.

Trading statement today. I can't see much being paid at all. I never could, if there is such a thing as common Justice or commonsense.

"The group is committed to achieving a fair outcome for customers and providing redress where loss has occurred. However, it does not believe the redress methodology proposed by the FCA appropriately reflects actual customer loss or achieves a proportionate outcome. In addition, the FCA's proposed approach to assessing unfairness does not align with the legal clarity provided by the Supreme Court judgement in respect of the "Johnson" case, which confirmed that the test for unfairness is highly fact specific and must take into account a broad range of factors."

We are continuing to engage with the FCA on the consultation, which is open until 12 December 2025. The FCA expects to publish final rules for the redress scheme in February or March 2026."

So what can we conclude?

Both a takeover or a significant share buy back would be very difficult with this company and would involve bribing shares away from institutional investors at a very significant price. That can only be good news for us shareholders.

The small number of shares in play indicates a very unstable system and may explain why the price crashed to below two pounds and why it could shoot on any favourable news or rumour or short closure. It perhaps also explains the daily streams of tiny value AT trades which are being used to drive the price up and down. There isn't any real liquidity with CBG!

Or am I jumping to the wrong conclusion?

Wiki. The vast majority of shares are held by institutions, with the full breakdown of ownership as follows:

Shareholder Type Number of Shares Percentage of Shares Outstanding

Institutions ~136.96 million 91.9%

General Public ~9.76 million 6.55%

Employee Share Scheme ~1.58 million 1.06%

Private Companies ~353.6 thousand 0.237%

Public Companies ~296.6 thousand 0.199%

Individual Insiders ~78.8 thousand 0.0529%

............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

If they bought 10% of 150m shares where would they come from? I've got 34k and they aren't having any of mine!

Thanks Liberty.

I imagine that the management wouldn't be averse to paying a dividend at the moment but it would have very bad optics with everything being so much up in the air. In fact it would look irresponsible. So as Knot says, a share buy back would look logical. Don't these have to be approved at an AGM? Well we've got an AGM coming up.

What was the maximum DCA commission percentage being paid by CBG? How many loan agreements were affected? If below the 35/10 barrier what penalty will be paid? I don't think we've ever been told this. CBG must by now have figured out what the compensation will be under a variety of scenarios. Will we be told?

I'll give you three guesses!

Fidelity Special

Through the year, fund managers Alex Wright and Jonathan Winton maintained their contrarian, value-driven approach recycling capital from strong performers into undervalued recovery opportunities across the market-cap spectrum.

Within financials, exposure was reduced by exiting positions in Barclays

BARC

2.66%

and Phoenix Group Holdings

PHNX

0.52%

following strong rallies while reducing the stake in AIB Group. Proceeds were redeployed into Lloyds Banking Group

LLOY

1.74%

, Close Brothers Group

CBG

1.83%

and Secure Trust Bank

STB

1.78%

, reflecting a more constructive outlook on UK lending and the motor-finance sector.

Sorry can't post the Times article, it's behind a paywall. Skinny posted it yesterday on the ADVFN LLOY board, it works there

HtTps://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/car-loans-firms-push-remove-seven-years-claims-pqx0rm3jm

Https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/car-loans-firms-push-remove-seven-years-claims-pqx0rm3jm

Knot thank you very much for your recent posts - very helpful.

One point puzzles me: "liabilities back to 2007 exist, no matter what” - According to Clydesdale."

I can't find this. The claim against Arnold Clark relates to a 2018 transaction. Have I missed the reference from the judgement ?

Telegraph article today. It really looks as though Charlie Nunn of Lloyds at least is going to fight this in the courts. The readers comments are very interesting, the majority seem to be against the whole thing as being stupid. Perhaps the readers commentating are bank shareholders or perhaps it's public opinion - who knows.

Encouraging rather than discouraging anyway.

"If so, not only will the banks have to fully redress the hard done by car buyers, but pay all the staff to deal with such, and then pay the legal fees if they lose."

Oh Chid, Why couldn't you have told me this earlier before I invested all that money.

Oh dear ..........................Oh dear, Oh dear!

I would think everything stops dead if there is a court case. The last thing the FCA will want after the January revised submission is a court case dragging the issue out for another six months or so. You could say this is the bank's trump card - threaten a court case. The FCA know that they are skating on thin ice with regard to the Statute of Limitations acts and I don't think they will want it tested in court . So I think we'll have a very whittled down scheme presented which will be acceptable to all 20 or of the lenders. The banks are in no way in a weak position in my opinion. FCA.

WhatIdsaytothat "Hope I'm wrong but I got absolutely no sense that the FCA is prepared to concede on any major points."

Well really how could they make concessions, the negotiations are only just starting with the lenders.

After a series of fraught discussions with the banks they will have had to listen to legal objections and arguments that we probably haven't even thought of yet, plus the constant threat of court action. Then they will go away to deliberate in December, knowing that to get any kind of scheme accepted they will have to go for the lowest common denominator. The amended scheme presented in January is likely to be a very pale imitation of the present one in my opinion. How do I know? I don't, I'm just speculating like everybody else.

Today was an indicator to the FCA as to what they are likely to be up against. Having caused this mess in the first place by failure to regulate I don't think they're in a very strong position and it just got a bit weaker today. Take heart, all is not yet lost!

"cannot prove they had a loan - does the lender have to give them the benefit of the doubt?"

Oh I do hope so. I haven't had a car loan for 40 years but if they're giving away free money on my say so, I'm applying to all the lenders. They can't touch you for it - I hope!

Liberty -Thank you so much for taking the trouble to reply to my queries, many others will have been helped as well. It seems to me that we have far more grounds for optimism here than is indicated by the depressed share price. This is encouraging for a bloke who has just had a £30k cut in his paper profits by one unfortunate statement by CBG!