Lloyds, Murray, Whyte and Ticketus

[mitre_mouldmaster 21,509]

Can I remind everyone that Lloyds were basically forced to buy HBOS. If they didn't HBOS would have went under, recession or not (see this weeks news). If they had happened rangers debt would have been called in as would every other loan owed to HBOS. The country, especially Scotland, would have went into meltdown and rangers would have been unable to pay the debt at the time. Unfortunately for Lloyds the HBOS toxic debt was massive and hence the taxpayers bailout. So, once again, and it has been said already, Lloyds took a business decision to take the money rather than lose it. I'll say it again, down to SDM selling to the wrong man and subsequently the HMRC for liquidation for a fantasy debt.

So this 'business decision' was perfectly okay?

Lloyds could come out and say "Yes we told David Murray that we would call in all the debt for MIH if he did not sell to Craig Whyte!" and they would not face any trouble for it?

Of course they would, this would be blackmailing Murray into a position where he had to make sure a deal happened regardless of the person he was selling to and the damage he could do to the other creditors.

Yes, they seen the writing on the wall with the BTC, and could see that their debt was at risk, but that does not give them the excuse to fuck over everyone else to get their funds back. Risk weightings are applied to credit deals like this. Regardless of how they ended up with the Rangers debt, it does not give them the excuse to behave like that.

IF that is how it went down of course.

[a loyal man 4]

I'm not naive, I'm a realist. You have failed to take cognisance of what I posted. Lloyds wanted Murray to reduce the MIH debt and that looked like it could possibly increase via RFC. Donald Muir was on a number of MIH company boards at the behest of Lloyds. He saw that the £18m may become £90m+ and that there could be the possibility of administration or liquidation. I have no proof that Lloyds or Murray knew of the Ticketus involvement and neither do you. Alastair Johnston and the rest of the board members didn't shout particularly loudly at the time. If they knew more about Whyte they should have put it into the public domain. They may have had some reservations but there was no major outcry from the other directors.

The police investigation into the Whyte takeover of RFC should uncover who knew what. Until that is made public, can you stick to facts instead of using speculation as an argument.

Was that you putting your hands up? Put it this way would you buy a used car from Murray or Lloyds?

[st1965 14]

Mitre the bottom line is that Lloyds only done what any business would have done. It's business. Talk of blackmail is ridiculous but if you have this as fact I will bow to ur superior knowledge. The problem we all have is that the facts are not known and blackmail talk is bizarre. As already alluded to by others hopefully the facts will come out when whyte is in court.

[Big Al 55 9,281]

Think of the team that lost to malmo in the cl qualifiers, now sell say 10 million quid of talent, tgats jelavic and davis or naismith, bougherra also

So mccoist might have had a season where we had weir and broadfoot as our centre halves, whittaker at right back and papac at left with no cover whatsoever

Midfield would have been davis, edu and two young boys on either side, with lafferty and healy up front and again no cover

Imagine that lot in the spl, we'd have struggled for top 6

Without the BTC liability we would have had no shortage of suitors, we just needed to be run better.

It all boils down to the BTC and a disastrous decision by Murray 12 years ago.

[dummiesoot 16,013]

Big al ii utter pish ebt use was common place it was business practise to reduce tax liability like all businesses with good accountants do. SDM was not responsible for Rangers being seen as a soft target when the rules changed.

Very easy to say in hindsight "disasterous decision".

[st1965 14]

Correct dummiesoot

[mitre_mouldmaster 21,509]

Big al ii utter pish ebt use was common place it was business practise to reduce tax liability like all businesses with good accountants do. SDM was not responsible for Rangers being seen as a soft target when the rules changed.

Very easy to say in hindsight "disasterous decision".

When you take a risk that is the chance you take though.

It was a very aggressive form of tax avoidance. Other clubs chose not to use them, and the reason for this is not because they love paying taxes or were ignorant to the method, it was because they felt it was a risk.

It turned out that we paid very highly for that risk.

[a loyal man 4]

Mitre the bottom line is that Lloyds only done what any business would have done. It's business. Talk of blackmail is ridiculous but if you have this as fact I will bow to ur superior knowledge. The problem we all have is that the facts are not known and blackmail talk is bizarre. As already alluded to by others hopefully the facts will come out when whyte is in court.

Thats assuming the rumours the allegiances of the Lloyds guys running the account played apart in the decision making are untrue of course.

Personally I don't care they did it to my team and my money was withdrawn and account closed and I told them exactly why. It won't break them not with tax payers available to pay their bonus for them, but it was a tidy some (for me anyway) and it was unbelieveable how good it felt to do it.

[st1965 14]

Have u stopped paying ur tax as well? Bottom line is that u r entitled to listen to rumours but personally and IMO the facts so far is that HMRC pursued rangers for a fantasy debt which made rangers non sellable! The facts so far is that they have lost the case. The ironic bit about all of this is that HMRC appealing the case will cost the tax payer more than what whyte withheld from them! So IMO the blame for this lies fully with HMRC and if they didn't pursue us we would be paying back £1m a year to Lloyds (remember this is lloyds money not rangers) and we would have no whyte, green etc. Pity rangers fans didn't sign the petition as the full facts may have came out instead of rumour after rumour created by the press to sell papers !!!