Member Info for LIBERTY2

Lets hope so.

If the liability to Close does indeed come in at the provisioned £165m, theres only one way up for this SP come Monday.

Https://www.cityam.com/motor-finance-nothing-is-certain-as-banks-await-historic-ruling/

RBC legal analyst Julius Grower anticipated “that the court will find that the banks were liable under statute, focussing on egregious discretionary commissions, but will clear them of liability in equity and under tort”.

Analysts Benjamin Toms and Pablo de la Cuevas said liability under statute would be “an ideal way for the Supreme Court to hand this issue back to the FCA to set up a softer general redress scheme”.

Should this be the case, the analysts projected Lloyds would be on the hook for an extra £400m than the £1.2bn already in provision.

Meanwhile, Santander could climb to £800m from £300m. Close Brothers’ £165m is expected to suffice.

This is not aimed at anyone in particular so nobody needs to get their back-up - this is just my general observations and realities for people involved in these investments.

It becomes more apparent on a daily basis that people are invested in this company and thousands of others elsewhere without any genuine knowledge of where they have placed their hard earned. Its been an eye-opener in the past few months since joining this platform for a bit of varied discussion on a large personal holding.

If you are holding enough here to make it worth your while, you should know balance sheets back to front, this is basic investing 101 stuff. If for one moment the genuine belief was that CBG shareholder equity was to the tune of negative 2 billion - this would be an awful investment, and why is this only new information 3 days prior to a very significant event for the company.

You should know the business and all of its tangents, plus its history and issues or previous successess. You should understand its internal structure and future goals. In this event you should have a clear understanding of the legal process and a formally mapped analysis of its outcome etc etc etc.

None of us know all of the answers thats for sure, but we have the greatest resource of information at our finger tips. All of the information is out there to be learnt and researched, prior to investing. Some are better at understanding it than others, but without understanding this is a mindless game.

I do believe that these forums are quite a dangerous place. It would appear people are easily led by ill-informed comments on both sides of a stock price around price predictions, passive 'analysis' etc. from people that honestly don't have a clue. Investment decisions should not be based on internet chatter, hard research and personal understanding is the only way to go, prior to parting ways with your capital.

All the best folks.

Riffgo - it appears you may be confusing their financial position. CBG has £1.7bn of net assets ( figure after all liabilities including debt are paid). The debt figure is an instrument of lending, generating a return, accounted for on the balance sheet in a typical banking structure.

Shorts - 3%, I repeat, 3%, of shorts are declared here - either because they believe the share price will decline, they are so underwater on their investments (after buying in Nov - Feb) that they have no choice to hang in for divine intervention, or because they are part of a hedged long strategy.

I cannot fathom why people are so hung up on 3% of the market thinking one direction, and ignore the 97% who by definition expect the opposite.

Either way - all the best with your thoughts and decisions.

A nice steady orchestrated step down sort of day today, following from a volatile upbeat opening with some heavy volume.

Interesting to see several decent trades ( £60k approx ) going through at £4.32, in the post auction window tonight, either from a MM / II.

Often a signal of the genuine market sentiment when you look past the intraday games.

Suns shining - again! Enjoy folks - as SWKM says, only 50 more years, if we are lucky - go out and smell the roses!

Probably live-streamed on the SC website.

From CBG RNS:

''The judgment is expected to be summarised at a brief hearing after the close of market trading at 4.35 p.m. on Friday, 1 August 2025 and made available on the Supreme Court website shortly thereafter.''

Friday, after the Court summary, I would imagine.

Morning Chid,

For somebody who places such weight on the presence of shorters (without any knowledge of the basis of the position, naked / hedge etc), its unusual you fail to acknowledge the short position has approx halved in the past few months - with 75% of the declared short positions actively reducing in the past few days.

Almost appears you refuse to be objective on your opinions.

Enjoy your Sunday.

It appears the Guardian have indeed succeeded in their job, delivering an article at peak time for conversation, using the most controversial headline slant…

Nick - respectfully you are late to the party. The reality that the Gov would intervene by way of legislation has been tabled in this layperson forum for over 6 months, to think it has not been discussed at high level Government is naive.

How are you distinguishing between the exceptionally rare attempt of intervention in the SC case by Reeves in January, attempting to steer an outcome, and a contingency plan for dealing with an adversing outcome today? You think the two things are not intrinsically the same thing?

The Treasury's submission in January was that an adverse ruling would have systematic damage to the sector and wider economy. Their position, as shown by prudent contingency planning, is exactly the same today - why would it be any different, the verdict is not known…

Either way, we can save our fingers and wait 5 days for a definitive answer.

All the best.

Also this spooky talk - only one theme tune for the day:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fola80rQop4&t=52s&pp=2AE0kAIB

Randommix:

You feel spooked because your very human emotion of fear is creeping into your psyche and replacing the excitement and anticipation that has prevailed for several months, right up until the moment the actual day we have all been waiting for is given a firm date, and it becomes very real to your brain.

Again, going back to my point this morning on perspective. You are blinded by your position. From the perspective of a claims management company, or one of the millions of consumers who have lodged a claim, the most ‘controversial’ judgment would be siding with the banks. See my point?

Its after hours because:

- it will be volatile, make your own mind up who will benefit from it - I do not know for sure. All parties will be trying to take advantage of this, the delay provides a circuit breaker. The Court actively avoids volatility in financial markets.

- it will be a multiple hundred page legal document with very complex literature to digest in order to fully understand the verdict, the weekend gives the market, banks, CMCs, Gov, consumers time

- this is an incredibly significant matter, to think they would just punt it out with other trivial matters may have been naive, by myself included

- the SC certainly does not ‘leak bits over a few days’…

- operational change will be required by corporations immediately as has been stated, why land this on all parties at the start of a working day, then facilitating the breaking of law throughout that day when those changes have not been able to be updated so quickly?

If you cannot keep emotions in check with investments, its tricky. You have a simple solution of selling next week, buying back when you feel more comfortable. The pros and cons of doing this are obvious. Don’t lose sleep over investments though!

All the best.

A lot of information to unpack yesterday - very news heavy day!

- ‘timing of rulings spooking’ - as a long holder you are seeing this from one perspective. If you were a shorter or betting against the market, you would also be spooked. The Courts are impartial and disinterested in whether what they say has a positive or negative affect on a companies share price - there primary concern is that it will have SOME affect. They will remove volatility in the financial markets, regardless of whether that is upward or downward on a chart - the SC do not concern themselves with who is winning or losing financially. The ruling was promised around July, and here it is.

- Treasury news article - can understand the optics on this, however as previously stated there will be and SHOULD be contingency plans for all possible outcomes in such a significant matter, this is basic planning from Government. The Treasury will have been building these plans from the week after the CoA surprise verdict, as shown by the attempted intervention - it serves no reflection on how they ‘think’ it is going at this moment. The Guardian are doing what they do, reporting on a story at the most relevant time to the readers, a week before a judgement. They picked the ‘plan’ which sells headlines, not the various other Government positions or responses in the case of other outcomes from the verdict that will also be planned. At the end of the day, it shored up the SP, take it as insurance for the sector.

- Winterflood sale - the timing was certainly deliberate. Close are bolstering the capital buffers in the event this ruling does not go the way they have estimated, another contingency plan - prudent and conservative management. The secondary optics are that it perfectly aligns with managements position of cutting the fat from the group, releasing capital from under performing areas and reinvesting in the core specialist lending business which has been their bread and butter for years, focusing on the higher ROI. The cash is either there for defence, or its there to reinvest, either way I like it.

As of right now, the market is pricing in a circa £750m hit to CBG based on the SP to NAV. This is crucial when understanding what affect the judgement will have over the next few weeks. A less than favourable judgement is already price along with a significant uncertainty discount. A positive one will cause the very aggressive rerate on the capital side plus the uncertainty lift premium.

We are the gates now folks, human emotion was always going to enter the fray at this point. Jitters are normal - zoom out and understand if this has gone the way you thought it would for the past 8 months, because for me its gone far better, and I trust it will continue.

All the best.

The court under its own ethos will actively avoid volatility if a decision can influence the market in any direction.

📉📈 Direction Doesn’t Matter — Volatility Does

• If a ruling could plausibly move markets in either direction (up or down), the court still prefers after-hours release to allow for:

• Calm analysis

• Full media and legal interpretation

• Equitable access to the judgment over the weekend

⸻

🏦 Practical Precedent

Regulators and other UK public bodies (like the FCA, BOE, Treasury, and sometimes courts) routinely time market-sensitive releases to:

• 7:00 am (before markets)

• 4:35 pm (after markets)

• Or hold embargoed press briefings under lockstep protocol

The court, especially in a major civil case involving financial services, pensions, or regulation, will align with this logic — not based on predicted direction of the share price, but simply that any material move is expected.

⸻

✅ Bottom Line

• The court isn’t taking a view on who “wins” in terms of share price.

• It’s acting cautiously and responsibly to prevent real-time trading volatility.

• So: Yes — they avoid all types of volatility, not just downside risk.

On the matter of comparing Lloyds / CBG shares - at this point you can expect them to be relatively dislocated in terms of their % movements.

Lloyds is trading at 1x book value. Close is trading at around 0.45x. Close stands to benefit from positive outcomes and upward SP movement in a very aggresive fashion, Lloyds is already at its trading level by most metrics.

At this time, with the capital buffers in place, you could consider CBG to be a less volatile bet than Lloyds, based on the SC case / FCA scenario alone which both stand to be positively or negatively influenced by.

I would concur.

It has removed a lot of the consumer focused personal waffle such as 'unsophisticated buyers, low incomes', and focuses on the hard law of bribery / fidicuary - which are the key elements that the market looks to have started pricing in as being removed from the judgement following much debate on this from legal experts / analysts over the past few months.

They have also removed the Disinterested Duty element - which I find very interesting. This was a shortcut route that the CoA used to land blame at the doors of the banks. It is a very grey principle which the CoA has leaned on in recent years. It has not yet been tested in this type of context at the SC level, and by the looks of this it may have just failed the test...

Just my laymans, bias, long, sizeable shareholding, interpretation.

So - no update of the Future Judgements page prior to this message today; Judgement will be 'some time in the future' is as gooder guess as any!

The SC has updated those listings, and the Change Log now to suggest it was 'A Typo in the Facts has been corrected'. I took it upon myself to compare the current Facts section with archived data of how it previously read. This could potentially offer a good insight into the ruling, which I believe is thrashed out by this point. See below

🔍 Key Differences Between Old and New Texts

✅ Difference 1: Party names — possessive form

Old version:

"The Hopcrafts’ claim was unsuccessful at first instance and her first appeal..."

(This is grammatically inconsistent — “Hopcrafts’” is plural, followed by “her.”)

New version (corrected):

"The Hopcrafts’ claims were unsuccessful at first instance and their first appeal..."

✔ Fix: Adjusted from singular ("her claim... her appeal") to plural ("claims... their appeal") to reflect that both Mr and Mrs Hopcraft are involved.

📝 This is almost certainly the "spelling" or grammatical correction mentioned in the Change Log.

✅ Difference 2: Simplified phrasing around consumer sophistication

Old version:

"...the claimants were financially unsophisticated consumers on relatively low incomes..."

New version (current):

(That entire introductory sentence is omitted — the summary starts directly with their transactions.)

✔ Fix: The Court likely streamlined the summary by removing subjective characterizations (“financially unsophisticated,” “relatively low incomes”), possibly to maintain neutrality or reduce unnecessary context.

✅ Difference 3: Omission of older FCA reference

Old version:

"From January 2021, these types of agreement are now banned by the Financial Conduct Authority."

New version:

(This sentence is removed entirely.)

✔ This regulatory note is absent in the updated version — likely for conciseness or relevance to the legal question at hand.

✅ Difference 4: Rewording of legal claims

Old version:

"...owed them a duty to provide information, advice or recommendation on a 'disinterested' basis."

New version:

"...contended that the commissions amounted to bribes at common law, or to secret profits received by the dealers as fiduciaries in equity."

✔ The legal framing of the claim is different — the updated version focuses on bribery and fiduciary breach, not merely a “disinterested” duty. This is a substantive legal clarification.

✅ Conclusion

The most likely "spelling" or grammatical fix that triggered the change log today is:

Changed "her first appeal" to "their first appeal"

— to properly reflect that both Hopcrafts (Mr and Mrs) are parties.

There were also substantive edits, such as:

Removing sub

The reality is the Treasury / Reeves have been talking along these lines since long before the SC case. When the link was provided this morning, I actually thought it was old news until I clicked through.

Its a matter of providing confidence to the sector / wider investors in ANY event. We would criticise any organisation / business who did not provide a full roster of contigency plans for any situation of this magnitude.

Interesting to gauge if the market is reacting to the news out of the Treasury, or the RNS - maybe both!

To quote the Guardian who had the exclusive:

''Under Treasury contingency plans being discussed for the event that justices decide to uphold the entirety of last October’s shock appeal court ruling that customers may be entitled to billions in compensation, the government would retrospectively change the law to cut liabilities for lenders.

Officials have been discussing the feasibility of superseding the supreme court’s decision – widely expected to come next week – with the Ministry of Justice and Department for Business and Trade, according to people familiar with the matter.''

If the SC does release a judgment date for Thursday today - can only imagine where this SP ends up with the momentum today.

Wow - the market likes this RNS.

Winterflood sold - interesting development. £103m in cash.

So there could be ANOTHER Future Judgement update today for Thursday next week - the last day of term…

Imagining Lord Reed delivering judgment with this playing in the background - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oo8QzDHimQ&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5tD

It was curious that the three cases were ‘updated’ on the SC site yesterday, but with no update on the Change Log - suggests there is shuffling going on in the background.

Either way - the suns shining, have a good one folks!