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How many people know the verdict? Judges, Secretaries, Printers, perhaps someone at the Treasury? If they keep a lid on this until 4:30 tomorrow they will have done well, after all they couldn't keep the Manhattan Project totally secret. Many of us will be paying very close attention to the trading tomorrow afternoon.

Mecanopsis - Absolute racing certainty in my opinion that sooner or later there will be a bid from some entity. Large banks have very limited opportunities to grow quickly. Try to attract business through interest rates and they face retaliation from competitors and profitability goes down. Try to merge or take over a rival and they face the monopoly commission. Take Lloyds for example. They make large profits but seem not to know what to do with them, so they come up with the weak solution of buying back their own shares, which to me indicates a management bereft of ideas. An obvious solution is to use some of the buyback money to take over a company like CBG and absorb the loan book into Black Horse . The only thing preventing a bid at the moment IMO is the inability for anyone to really value CBG until the full value of the compensation (if any!) is decided, but good verdict or bad verdict, that ends tomorrow . Another factor, it almost looks as though the CEO is preparing the company for a takeover, because he's been selling off the peripheral parts and stacking up cash. CBG really needs to get the share price up quickly as a defence, because at £4 they are sitting ducks . You asked for thoughts, those are mine.

I'm a simple soul and I wonder on what basis compensation will need to be paid for DCA's? The FCA watched lenders use DCA's from 2007 and till 2021 when they were banned. WTF was it doing all that time?

If the lenders being consulted refuse to go along with compensation, on the basis they weren't breaking any of the existing laws at the time, or breaking any FCA, rules then won't the claims management companies have to put a test case through the courts? Perhaps someone cleverer than myself could explain.

Simplified company + load of cash = takeover target. Consolidation is widely predicted in the banking sector this year. Just saying!

Ok, I take your point, perhaps I shouldn't have made that post. However in my experience boards can quickly degenerate and go a completely off topic. One off posts triggering several responses. Take a look at the Lloyds board on ADVFN, "Black Beauty: A Recovering Quadruped" as an example. It's degenerated into general discussion, politics, people riding their hobby horses and prejudices. Looney's, bigots and crackpots welcomed. What you won't get is any information about Lloyds.

This itself is off Topic and I've stated my opinion so I'll shut up.

I think we've been down memory lane with the golden oldies rather too much lately. In this week, of all weeks, all I'm interested in is CBG. Let's Stay on topic.

"The Court will draw a sharp distinction based on the level of disclosure. It will affirm that a fully undisclosed commission, as in the Hopcroft (Close Brothers) case, is a bribe in established legal principles. The payment of such a commission renders the lender, as payer, liable for primary wrongdoing. "

(Gemini. Which may be wrong but it sounds logical to me)

Am I the only one who finds this concerning? What I don't know, but what I would like to know, is how many cases of secret commission are Close Brothers involved in? Absent this information, how can anyone set a value on the company?

LIBERTY2 Thanks for your helpful post.

I am expecting that the fiduciary duty aspect will be a non-starter. However, I think that payment for DCA's, especially excessive DCA's is likely. To what extent will this affect Close Brothers? Does anyone know? Did Close Brothers pay DCA's? I don't remember seeing any estimates.

"The Court might narrow the scope of duties, ruling that dealers owe a disinterested duty but not necessarily a fiduciary one."

OK - accepted............ but that would be changing the rules. Why should anyone be penalised for breaking rules that did not exist at the time. It seems damned unfair to me.

Liberty, I take your point but here compensation is based not on product cost but on an unnecessary raised interest rate. Interest rates on car loans are based on all kinds of things, competition, bank rates, credit ratings, the ability of the lender to borrow money itself, and so on.. It's a right can of worms. I'm obviously biased in favour of Close Brothers, but I think that fairest thing to say is that DCA's were undesirable and were outlawed, but historic compensation is so fraught with difficulty that the best thing is to draw a line in the sand and disallow previous claims. Sadly not much confidence that this will happen.

The Consumer Credit Act protects a borrower from excessive interest rates. DCA's obviously lead to excessive interest rates and were quite rightly banned in 2021. But the act does not define what excessive is, that's the problem , it talks about unfair interest rates being reduced on a case by case basis by a court. Does the FCA have the power to force companies to make blanket retrospective redress payments in the absence of a court ruling ? Who knows! What happens if the lenders don't roll over with their paws in the air like they did with PPI and decide to start fighting a few cases? I'm not a lawyer but I can't see this being settled quickly .

They just said July. Sooner rather than later I am expecting, although there are five judges to conform to a decision the bribery nonsense looks clear cut to me. I think the DCA's may be just thrown to the FCA to sort out.

HTtps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JALu3zYOP0

Another viewpoint.

Re-reading the Charlie Nunn article more carefully it seems rather a bombshell. If Close Brothers were paying a competitive rate of interest then their liability could be very little if anything. As Nunn says, if there is no harm how can there be redress due? I don't know how good Close Brothers rates were, perhaps someone else does.

"In other words, the burden of proof lies with the lender. If the Supreme Court confirms that lenders were required to disclose commission arrangements, it will fall to the firms, not customers, to show that a lack of disclosure did not cause financial harm.

Rose describes the burden of proof falling on the lender as: “a challenge but still very achievable. For each year, there needs to be a standard table showing benchmark rates for similar loans and for similar customers e.g. similar credit score. Where the customer paid near the benchmark or below it, then it should be reasonable to assume there was no harm.”

I imagine this idea has originated with Lloyd's lawyers and the FCA.

HtTps://www.motorfinanceonline.com/comment/car-finance-redress-burden-of-proof-lies-with-lenders-not-customers/?cf-view

A very interesting slant on this from Charlie Nun CEO of Lloyds.

HtTps://www.cityam.com/motor-finance-how-rough-a-ride-are-close-brothers-in-for/

A pretty good Hatchet job which might explain some of the selling today. I'll take my chances on a favourable verdict.

If you want proof that you're betting in a bent casino, then it's staring you in the face today. Try thinking year ahead with a small penalty behind us and the divi resumed, you won't be able to buy them out to 337p then.

I've traded in and out three times on the way up and it has been profitable, but at this late stage I would be scared to do it again. There is nothing sacrosanct about July as the time for the Supreme Court verdict. The Appeal Court made a right meal of the case that they considered, the reasoning for the verdict was long and complex and as I remember took ages to read. After watching the Supreme Court for three day's I formed the impression that the fiduciary case and the bribery was simple and could have been settled there and then if necessary, but obviously they have to go through the motions of considering it and setting down their legal arguments. I could be wrong - dead wrong of course.. The point I am making is that it is possible that the decision could be made in June rather than July. If I am right and the decision goes the way I'm thinking it will, the price is immediately over £4 if not £5. So I don't want to have any part of my holding out over the next few weeks, but each to their own preferred way of trading. It is damned tempting though. The DCA's will be left to the FCA to sort out I think.

Anyway it's a pretty good prospect at the moment.

Posted by Cobourg on the other thread.

htTps://www.freeths.co.uk/insights-events/legal-articles/2025/motor-finance-supreme-court-hearing-the-latest-viewpoint

From the Lloyds Bank thread. Final paragraph encouraging:

"Whilst very difficult to predict at this stage, our feeling is that the Supreme Court is more likely to come down on the side of the lenders and find that the dealers did not owe a fiduciary duty to consumers. This would result (except in the exceptional circumstances flagged above) in the consumers’ claims failing, therefore avoiding the potential opening of the floodgates for these types of claims."

Freeths also have the opinion that only excessive commissions will be the subject of compensation. Presumably the FCA would have to define what excessive was and lay down guidelines for the finance companies to pay compensation.

I dare to hope that for once I (cobourg) am backing a really big winner.