M@islebugs wrote:I don't think anyone believes the assurances Adey. If half of what Coulby said is true then God knows what they're going to find.
If what Coulby said was true, and the WHOLE truth and not just selective extracts of the truth, then - as well as being quite extraordinary, it goes some way to explaining why the black hole had to be significantly larger than we were told. It HAD to be, because when you do the maths (as I did) we should have been left with ample from the sale of the lease to clear down any non-day to day liabilities. The fact that we clearly were NOT HAS to mean there were more historic liabilities than we had been told about, IMO. I've said that in private almost from the start, as others will attest.
And I have seen references to a couple of clear candidates in previous posts on this forum.
BUT, all that said, to me everything - including specific responses from the BoD - pointed towards the pledge £1/2m being enough to clear down those liabilities, which was the previous BoD's line and which was why I supported the pledge as being the only game in town. And, for me most importantly of all, in discussions I raised the matter of trading whilst insolvent, and I felt it was clear Hood was fully aware of the consequences of that, and had been advised accordingly.
IF they called in the pledges recklessly, without reasonable expectation that by doing so then insolvency should be avoided, then I believe the BoD Could be personally liable for losses people incurred as a result. Which is why I suspect that, on balance of probabilities, there are no big crystalised liabilities still waiting to be discovered. But I can only form a view based on information and explanations made available, and on the assumption that the BoD was at least moderately competent.
I don't think I'm betraying any great secrets by saying that I was told, by highest-placed sources on more than one occasion, that CC's intervention - together with those of Sutcliffe and Preston and some other public statements - made things very much more difficult for the BoD in trying to raise funds. Indeed, Hood as good as said that in public by confirming that new investors were unlikely to want to complete deals with guys whom the owners of the business were in the course of seeking to remove.
My own opinion, FWIW, was and remains that that could have been the intent, and it is also my opinion that the intervention probably contributed to the delay in confirming that the pledge would be called in. But we'll likely never know for sure one way or the other, and I stress I do and can only speculate. I hope that, on the former at least, I am wrong. And we'll almost certainly never know now whether, left to their own devices, the BoD would have pulled it off, so the whole issue has now become hypothetical anyway.
But if Hood & Co were to have called the pledges in if there were still substantial financial skeletons in the closet that called into question the survival of the company, then IMO they would have been reckless crazy fools. And, whatever folk may think of Hood, I really can't see Ryan being party to anything like that, risking major personal liability?
For those reasons, whilst I am quite sure we were never told the whole truth, equally I find it very hard to believe we were told a pack of lies.
But I've got to the stage that little in this whole sad, sorry saga would surprise me any more.
