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Interestingly the shorts added to thier positions today and yet the shares rallied through the day with an attempt to drag the end of day settlement down..... Might make for a very interesting Friday settlement and an even more interesting situation next week after the index settlement on the 3rd.

Relative to the Supreme Court...

"The protection sector needs to focus its attention on a ruling which threatens to drive a “coach and horses” through every part of commission in financial services, according to Robert Sinclair, chief executive at the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI)."

https://healthcareandprotection.com/landmark-ruling-threatens-to-drive-coach-and-horses-through-commission-sinclair/

This is the sort of perspective and outcome, which will require the Supreme Court to clarify if not reverse the Court of Appeals overly extended interpretation of when a fiduciary role is considered.

Supreme court application filed :

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-car-finance-deals-scandal-banks-court-ruling-cost-billions/

Timing is now upto 2 weeks for notice of objections

After that another delay to respond to proceed

Then await hearing to decide if the case is heard

Direct Line had an approach from Aviva, which is quite different from CBG at the moment. My thought is more around the movement after the exit from the 250 is settled on the 3rd. The shorts may have a day or two after trying to flush out some longs, but I'm thinking the volumes and momentum are going to run against them too much.

Over the last few days it would appear that Marshall Wace Llp are increasing thier position by about 0.1% per day, which if around 70% of the shares are institutional holders, this could get quite interesting.

There have been no notified changes recently of institutional holders, so they may have been in a position of sit and hold. The remaining shares then are about 30% and with the current short position of just over 3% that's now getting over 10% of what could be viewed as the more liquid portion of the overall holders. Add in a few other larger holders and this relative short volume may become rather more susceptable to a significant squeeze if it is based on a much smaller pool of daily liquidity.

Should a significant rally start, once momentum builds, the shorts will be forced out if they don't have any other option strategy in the wings. After the index settlement on the 3rd, who will be selling onced the forced sell volumes have dissapeared and one source of bearish momentum is removed ?

Probability play on risk returns.

It's just a thought as to the relative risk return that may have been apparent at the time, very remote chance the CoA ruling would go the way it did vs the pricing of very deeply out of the money options. The short play since (momentum play as well) seems to make sense with the buyers suspended due to the uncertainty leaving it a relatively risk free short at the time. The massive squeeze the day after it hit 180 seemed to be the end of the play on the downside and now the index play is all that is left. The options may well be fund and index holders hedges for managing positions relative to the major index participants at the time, where CBG with 1bn plus was a bit larger than it is now... All just a hunch, which seems to be playing out so far. The true (rip your face off) rally I believe starts next week. What is more telling in one regard is the lack of larger holders closing out, so to me all of the fall is predominantly index volumes, which sets the stage for a return momentum rally back into the 250 starting next week.

"Shorts affected by movement out of the FTSE 250?"

I'm making an assumption you know how the weighted index works, however for a little more context. Let's suppose that with CBG at say 400 some funds "sell" deeply deeply out of the money puts for say 250 as a rough point that CBG falls out of the next index review. CoA ruling removes institutional and initial takeover risk buyer volumes. As the share falls the weighting of CBG within the 250 index decreases a little, resulting in some shares being sold out. Shorts sell early, buy back later in the day as the index volumes are trickled out through the day or end of day settlement. Shorts only need to have days where there is a net selling of volume to push the market down significantly (no volume buyer risk). Holding the price sub 250 at option expiry (lets say it's tied to the 250 index review date) would then end up with these puts being excised and they get a volume back at 250. It may not be the day to day P&L that then matters rather the overall gain of the strategy and the gain being the initial significant fall. This is why I think that the price will be capped to around 230 before the 3rd. If the shorts close out and buy back early with 3% the price would rally back up to say 280 or higher. The real game is to then have a second play of pushing CBG back into the 250 and rinse all the index funds for a second time. Just my tin foil hat perspective and view, not that it is any sort of recommendation or advice.

I beleive it's all to do with the FTSE250 index exit, which settles out on the 3rd Dec with the index rebalancing. This is the only source of forced sellers, other than daytraders with narrow limits that are easily flushed out with a bit of momentum. The shares can't be allowed to gain too much momentum at the moment, otherwise the shares could have eneded up staying in the 250. Once those forced sellers are gone next week, the shorts have no backing volume to fill thier positions or carry momentum easily. I would guess that the shorts have sold or bought options (puts or calls) around this event as one way of covering to avoid getting run over in a sharp rally. The shorts are now having to add volume just to hold the price in a narrow band.... Patience or load up and sit back is my motto.

Curiously two of my trades are missing from the exchange data, they normally show as off-book, however two are missing and presume they are being internally traded, which I thought was a no-no due to transparency. Otherwise there is a volume of buys going into todays end of day settlement, which might be interesting.

I do believe that this is all an index play with the selloff to stunt yesterdays momentum, which could have posed a risk to the shorts holding CBG outside the 250 index. Will see over the next week or so, past the 3rd index settlement date.

Appeal timing so far looks like (some dates to be confirmed or timings) :

25 Oct - Ruling handed down by Court of Appeal (done)

xx Oct - Application made to Court of Appeal for permission to appeal (done)

1 or 4 Nov - Refusal to appeal by Court of Appeal (via Politico) (done)

< 28 Nov - Appeal to Supreme Court (tba - Indicated "imminent" in Q1 update)

< 14 days after appeal - Notice of Objections to be filed (tba)

xx mmm - Appeal panel - 3 Judges decide if appeal is to proceed

< 14 days - Notification of wish to proceed

xx mmm - Appeal hearing - judgement at the end of the hearing

< 14 days - If delayed reserved judgement given

Last post appeared to have some characters in that truncated thw whole post...

Appeal timing so far looks like (some dates to be confirmed or timings) :

25 Oct - Ruling handed down by Court of Appeal (y)

xx Oct - Application made to Court of Appeal for permission to appeal (y)

1 or 4 Nov - Refusal to appeal by Court of Appeal (via Politico) (y)

Based on the current calculation of the exit position, CBG would have to get to a market cap of around 380 to stay in the 250. This may be possible with a good run, but I wonder if the shorts are going to try and hold the gains back for an exit and then a flip to a bull run to push back into the index the following quarter. This I think is the prime mover over the next week because the Supreme Court timeline will only (if announced) indicate CBG has filed thier appeal before the deadline of the 28th Nov. This week is also the last full week for any weekly options settlement ahead of index rebalancing the following week.

Index settlement is on 3rd Decemeber...

https://www.stockchallenge.co.uk/ftse.php

Because a buyer came along and was willing to pay a good premium for CBAM. If it was an existential emergency they would be running the books down to release capital, stopping investment, reducing head count significantly, etc. etc..

No, it's all based around what is not really covered in the trial directly, rather referenced to in other cases and then implied the came applies in this case. Basically they infer that a "fee" is embeded within the car sale price, which in turn is the engagement fee for the broker to arrange the finance. This "secret fee" ironically, is then deemed to allow a fiduciary role to be assumed, where the second "secret" commission is then interpreted as a bribe due to the fiduciary role. The problem is the initial "secret fee" supposedly embeded in the car sale price means the car has two prices, depending if your buying on finance or cash.... which is a slight problem on multiple accounts.

"IF they continued using the credit cards" - completely incorrect if this is based on anything to do with the DCA ruling. The Supreme Court appeal may well side with the FCA/CBG, stopping PPI reopening and capping the DCA claims closer to CCA awards and criteria. In the process stopping the UK looking like it's run by clowns herding headless chicken.

Reading through the Supreme Court Rules 2009 (as you do....)

With reference to the prior FCA comments about offering thier guidance, Part 2 (15) Interventions (1) Any person (a) any official body....... "may make written submissions to the Court in support of an application for permission to appeal and request that the Court takes them into account."

Objections are limited to only the direct parties (respondent)

Of note is that the FCA can't object to the appeal, rather the indication is that they are supportive of the appeal given thier prior statement and as far as I can tell is the only way for them to offer thier perspective. This is particularly interesting if I am reading and understanding it correctly.......

I would say realistic. The Supreme Court is not filled with legal minds that are completely different from the legal world and come up with something "outside the box". They rely on the building blocks of prior law, interpretation and very considered judgements. i.e. those judgements have a lot more depth and more broad considerations as to the implications. Get a group of very good lawyers together and you can then get a fair balance of probabilities as to the outcome. If the probability is heavily skewed towards say CBG being impacted quite conservatively or not at all then the huge discount in the current market cap vs the book value becomes extremerly appealing, even at double the existing stock price. The current short play of kicking them out the 250 index is relatively risk free, with the only risk at the moment being a bid contender comes forward and kicks your book deeply into the red.....

Lol.... rather than just posting existing news extracts I was trying to outline what the underlying facts of the case are or may be and how potentially they fall. For one case (Johnson) it "may" be clear CCA breach of the 50% threashold and redress is around 21% of the commission. CBG is way below the threashold under the CCA (Consumer Credit Act) and should be in the clear. That is if the case turns to Plevin and a CCA focus. The 3% commission level that CBG had within thier DCA's makes for them in the clear considering the "secret" aspect is completely irrelevant in the insurance market as a comparable. The manifestation of a fiduciary without a defined "fee" or express authority breaks a lot of other finance with lots of unintended consequences.... it's too damaging and reaches well beyond this case. That is why I beleive the end result will be a very low claim impact on CBG, unlike others that may have more significant impacts, but CBG is being dragged into the same basket perception (RBS's broad brush across the market). Just creates a great buy and sit back opportunity, Buffet style... :-)

"makes the label “fiduciary” “extremely fact dependent”. ""

Does this equate to an FCA scheme covering hunderds or thousands of different contractual wording variations between companies and dates and sequences of process..... ?