The private investor is a popular target for fraudsters.  The normal regulated financial firms have such a poor reputation that it is easy for a plausible shark to persuade even normally prudent people that he has something special to offer.

Victims of fraud in financial services are not in an easy position.  The fraudster of course has disappeared or is insolvent.  The normal avenues for address, the Financial Ombudsman Service and  the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, will not help because the fraudster almost always was not regulated.

The investigation and prosecution of unauthorised financial advisers is the business of the Financial Services Authority (FSA).  They get no money from the government for this; the FSA is funded by the industry.  The FSA's unauthorised business team is notoriously under-resourced.  I have at least two cases in hand where the FSA knew that a crook was taking investors' money, yet did nothing effective about it for months, even years.  

All is not always lost in such cases, however.  A fraudster seldom works alone and it is sometimes possible to obtain redress from those who knowingly or even carelessly gave the fraudster the opportunity to cheat.  Each case has to be seen on its own, with its own particular circumstances, but the following are examples of the possibilities:-

Joint tortfeasors

"Tortfeasor" is a legal word meaning someone who does someone else a civil wrong.  If the fraudster was engaged in any kind of joint enterprise with another party, that other party will also be liable for what the fraudster does.

The Employer or Principal

If the fraudster is employed by somebody or is an agent of another person or organisation, even if not specifically employed to engage in fraudulent activities, the employer or principal may be liable.  For example, in the old case of Lloyd v Grace Smith &Co., decided in 1912, a solicitor was liable for the thefts of his dishonest clerk, although, obviously, he did not employ him to steal.

The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, sections 26 to 28 provide that, generally speaking ,agreements made by or through unauthorised persons are unenforceable , and investors have a limited right to "unscramble" the resulting investments, even though the investments may have been passed through or ended up with a reputable business, such as a bank or life assurance company.  

Insurers

Curiously some businesses run dishonestly have sufficient of a veneer of respectability to become authorised and therefore insured.  These insurers will probably deny that they are liable for the dishonest activities of their insured, but their position is not strong. It's worth pressing.

The Bank

A fraudster will commonly have a bank account and banks do have some duties to non-customers.  If a banker has reasonable grounds, although not necessarily proof, for believing that a fraudster is an attempt to misappropriate funds, then it has a duty at least to enquire.  If an unauthorised financial business was obviously been carried on by a bank customer, it is at least strongly arguable that the bank should have made enquiries, and if those enquiries would have yielded a result that an illegal business was being carried on the bank may be liable for the consequences of its neglect.

The police and the criminal courts

The police and prosecuting authorities will be sympathetic but not much help.  They will only really be concerned with the fraudster.  A compensation order may be made by the court which convicts the fraudster, and an additional term of imprisonment imposed if the compensation is not paid.  But in practice of course the fraudster may either have no money or may choose to serve the additional term.

I regard these fraud cases as both interesting and challenging.  Each of them is a bit like a complicated exam question - how can liability be pinned on someone who can pay?  The task is often difficult but not always hopeless.  It is worth taking advice if you are in this unhappy position.

The FSA has published its "Retail Conduct Risk Outlook 2011" setting out what it sees as the risks facing the retail customers of financial firms in the future.

It's an interesting document running into 83 pages. I highlight the following:-

Major Banks

The FSA thinks complaints handling in major banks is poor. A change is necessary. In some banks this requires "sustained and vigorous effort from senior management".  The FSA speaks of weaknesses in banks' culture, particularly the governance arrangements, policies and control.

I see this a good deal.  The fundamental problem for banks is that they regard their customers as counterparties, i.e. people they do business with.  The notion that it gives professional unbiased advice to customers is foreign to a bank's basic culture.  This gets banks into all sorts of trouble particularly in the area of poor risk profiling (i.e. what can this customer afford to lose) and "bundling" one financial product with another (i.e. "borrow this money and buy this insurance policy" or "take this loan but buy this interest rate swap " ) More of rate swaps below.

The FSA highlights that banking profits have been under pressure because of low interest rates and there is therefore a drive to look for non-interest income.  That means fees from wealth management, financial advice etc.  I see no let up in the stream of clients we have with complaints about banks.

Structured Investment Products

These are contracts which promise certain returns in certain conditions; for example a return of 8% per annum provided that a particular stock market index does not fall below a certain point.

The FSA says that customers are interested in these because of current low interest rates and current market volatility.  Structured products offer some degree of capital protection, but customers investing in these take on a number of risks which some customers will find difficult to understand.  There is a danger that they are promoted in a way that is not clear, fair and not misleading and do not meet the individual clients' needs, circumstance and objectives.

I see a lot of clients complaining about bonds (usually investment bonds of some kind) which were sold as "safe" but turn out to have a number of risks hidden inside them.  There is usually a hefty commission attached as well.

Investment Risk Profiling

Financial firms are supposed to assess the risk a client is willing to take. There is a relationship between risk and reward. The client needs to understand this, and agree with his adviser where he stands.

The FSA suggests that ineffective risk profiling is a problem across different firms and is an important driver of unsuitable advice. Of the investment files it assessed between March 2008 and September 2010, half showed unsuitable investments which failed to meet the limits to the risk the customer was willing and able to take. 

I see this as well.  I often see files where information has not been collected, the customer's capacity or willingness to suffer loss has not been investigated and cash deposits or National Savings products not adequately considered.

There is no excuse for this - the exams that financial advisers are required to take highlight the need for adequate discussion between client and advisor on the risk a customer is willing or needs to take in order to achieve the desired reward.  Risk and award are essentially incompatible. It is much more attractive for a financial adviser to advise a risky product rather than something very boring like a deposit account.

Complex Products

The FSA indicates relatively new investment products are becoming popular.  Amongst these it lists traded life policy based investments.

Traded life policies are certainly a problem I see a lot of.  The essential feature of these is that the underlying life policies require feeding with premiums if they are to stay on foot.  If the lives assured in the portfolio of policies fail to die on time, then the portfolio must find capital with which to pay the premiums.  That capital may not be forthcoming, in which case the policies may have to be sold at a loss.  This risk seems never to be explained. The best known such scandal is KeyData, but we get to see plenty of others.

Cross Selling

The FSA has identified that several banks and building societies retail banking strategies involve cross selling, i.e. they try to sell more of their products to each individual retail customer.

The problem used to be endowment policies being sold with domestic mortgages.  Increasingly we are seeing interest rate swaps being sold with commercial loans to small and medium sized business (SMEs).  Typically the bank insists as a term of a commercial loan that the borrower takes out a contract to limit the effect of rises in interest rates.  The contract then provides for the borrower to pay the bank if interest rates fall. This is what is called a "derivative" contract. 

These derivative contracts are subject to the same rules for the selling of financial products as any other financial product, and bundling them up with another contract such as a loan, without advice specifically on it, is, on the face of it, completely unlawful.

When these were sold banks usually had a pretty good inkling that interest rates were going to fall. We have had a stream of clients facing demands from banks for payments due under these contracts.

Wealth Management

The FSA points out that wealth management and private banking services have suffered due to the diminished wealth of high net worth individuals, the decline in interest income and a decline in profitability from structured products (the sales of which have been hit by regulatory intervention). 

The FSA is concerned that poor practices, such as the unwarranted use of complex high cost products or selling wealth management services to customers who do not have enough money to justify the cost, may be a way for the banks to rebuild income.

What's missing?

A striking aspect of this FSA review is the concentration on banks and private banking/wealth management firms. There is little mention of the ordinary High Street IFA. We see this as tending to confirm what we see in our daily work, namely that the IFA community has cleaned up its act, and is now largely performing in accordance wit the statutory Conduct of Business rules. The larger players like banks have not yet got the message.

My practice

I am accustomed to advising in these situations. I remain keen to talk to people who believe they have suffered abuse at the hands of financial firms, whether in their personal capacities or via their businesses.  Please feel free to contact me if you feel I can help.

The keydata scandal has been much in the press.  It is a tangled story and many of the press reports allege fraud by one David Elias, the owner of SLS Capital.

Put very shortly keydata offered investment products which were backed (allegedly) by a portfolio of viatical policies.  Viaticals have long been known as a dodgy investment.  You have to go back to the 1980's when AIDS victims started to sell their life insurance policies.  The buyers undertook to keep the policies on foot by paying the premiums and paid money out front for the policies.  The AIDS victims were expected to die.

Unfortunately for the investors those suffering from AIDS used the money to buy new medicines which kept them alive.  So the policies in order to have any value at all had to be fed continued premiums and the prospect of sufficient deaths to generate money to pay those premiums receded.

The Keydata bonds were supposedly backed with policies written by reliable insurance companies.  They may have been true wholly or in part.  Since the history of Keydata is enveloped in murk we cannot be sure.  There are various action groups to be found on the internet.  Some of the unfortunate investors have received compensation; the Norwich & Peterborough Building Society has made an offer to compensate those whom it advised to go into Keydata.  The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) is compensating some purchasers of Keydata products, but not all, up to the limits of the scheme.  This amounts to 100% of the first £30,000 and 90% of the next £20,000 (£48,000 per claim).

Many investors will have lost more than £48,000 per investment.  Some will have been outside the categories which the FSCS is prepared to accept for compensation.
For those with outstanding losses it seems to me the best way forward is to look for compensation to the advisors who recommended these products.  It is in my view not necessary in most cases but particularly where there is a solvent adviser available, to delve into the structural difficulties which lead to the promised funds not being available at keydata level.

Those who have been compensated through the FSCS will have been required to assign their claims to the FSCS.  If the losses are more than the FSCS limit, the FSCS will normally agree to reassign the claim to the investor to enable him or her to get further compensation. Thus the investor can sue, but the first £48,000 of compensation received by the investor is repaid to the FSCS, the investor keeping the balance.

So there is a real prospect in most cases of getting full compensation, even though the FSCS has already paid out partial compensation.  Each claim will be different because it will depend upon the quality of the advice given by the adviser.  However in my experience most advisers relied on the Keydata product literature without further enquiry.  In practice any competent financial adviser knows that viatical policies are insecure investments because they require continual feeding with premiums.  The same is true of traded endowment policies, another area of concern.

The main difficulty faced by investors is limitation.  Keydata policies started to be sold to the public in 2005.  There is limitation period of six years so some of the earlier claims will be expiring soon.

Investors not be fully compensated must therefore take legal advice very shortly decide with a [whether they wish to pursue their advisors through the courts or the Financial Ombudsman Service or not at all.  My team has two families as clients with claims exceeding £1 million.  I am confident that we can make a substantial recovery for them.

In making a claim it is always sensible to consider if they can pay what you say you are owed.  It is a harsh but universal truth that you can't get blood out of a stone.  Furthermore, as society has become generally softer, the mechanisms available to a creditor to squeeze money out of a judgment debtor have become less effective.

This should not be a problem for the private investor or small business with a claim against a financial adviser, stockbroker or similar body.  This is because regulated deposit takers (i.e. banks, building societies and similar) and financial advisers and other investment firms have to meet stringent capital adequacy tests set by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).  In the case of banks the capital adequacy is provided by the minimum deposits that banks have to retain or deposit with the Bank of England.  In the case of financial advisers the FSA's rules require, in practice, professional negligence insurance.

So in theory there should never be any problems with actually getting your money.  In practice there are surprisingly common difficulties.

As to banks, we know from recent history that there have been runs on banks and building societies.  The most recent was the run on Northern Rock.  Banks do not have to have professional negligence insurance covering their deposits but in practice the Government, through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) is insurer of last resort.  The FSCS will guarantee up to £85,000 of any deposit by an eligible claimant - basically this includes private individuals and small businesses.  In practice, however, in the last 100 years or more no UK authorised bank has defaulted on its obligation to return money deposited with the bank.  

The financial obligations of investment firms are not nearly so secure.  My firm has had a steady throughput of clients who have been refused payment by the insurers of financial advisers and stockbrokers.  

Let me give some current examples. One involved the stockbrokers Wills & Co Ltd. where our client has been refused compensation by the insurers on the grounds that Wills & Co did not notify his claim to the insurers. In that case we have obtained judgment, and in due course will seek to enforce it against the insurers. In another case the insurers of Capital Finance and Planning Ltd are refusing to pay on the grounds that the liquidator of the company admitted the claim in its insolvency instead of referring it to them.  In a third claim, against Pritchards a firm of stockbrokers, we were told the insurers had repudiated cover on the grounds that our claim against them referred to "wilful default".  However, in the event the insurers appear to have relented because our client has now been paid in full.

It has to be said that the financial advice arms of the banks, for all their faults, at least do not suffer from this difficulty.  Banks do not default on their obligations although financial advisers all too often do.

How can this problem arise? It is because a contract of insurance is no more than a contract between the financial firm and the insurers. The individual clients have no rights under it, save those conferred in the event of insolvency of the financial firm by the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 1930 (soon to be replaced).  Enforcing rights against insurers direct can be problematical, although not impossible. We hope to do this our case against Wills & Co.

When there is no insurance the FSCS will again step in but only up to £50,000 per client per claim.  That maximum sum is often inadequate as losses in financial services matters are often very much larger than this.

How do you avoid this problem?  The important thing to remember when you first make your claim is to insist that the claim is referred to the financial firm's insurers.  That will put the insurers on notice and it then becomes more difficult for them to avoid paying out. Thereafter, if you do get into difficulty, take legal advice early.  So many of our clients go, unthinking, to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and then to FSCS without thinking what else they might be doing to protect their position against the insurer. When they ultimately come to us they present us with a bigger mess to unscramble than would have been the case had they come earlier.

The FSA has issued guidance affirming the relevance to financial advice and products of the Unfair Terms Consumer Contract Regulations of 1999.  This guide was issued in connection with the penalties taken by some mortgage companies when a borrower terminates a mortgage arrangement early (i.e. repays his loan). 

But these regulations are very interesting and important in the context of financial services generally.  They are in fact a bit of European law imported into UK law in 1999.  They are not as well known to the public as they should be.  Very simply drafted in easy to read language they say that an unfair contract term is not enforceable against a consumer.  An unfair contract term is one which ?contrary to the requirement of good faith, causes a significant imbalance in the party?s rights and obligations under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer?.  It only applies between a commercial seller of goods or supplier of services and a consumer.

In the context of mortgages, this advice is timely because lenders have been imposing penalties on early repayment of mortgages to cover things like the cost of arranging the mortgage, the cost of running the mortgage account, the loss of profit on lending, loss of interest and the cost of marketing etc. 

None of these should be recoverable.  What is recoverable are extra costs caused by the exit from the contract and these should be justified.

These rules are consistent with a very long line of English common law cases which are to the effect that the law does not like a penalty being agreed in a private contract.  Penalties, including awards of damages, are for the judges and not for one party to bully another one to agree at the time of entering into the contract.

I regret to say I do not believe these regulations apply to market value adjusters imposed in With Profit contracts but they could apply to some contracts where the benefits are all one way and the risks all another. 

They can similarly be applied to standard form agreements where the consumer is induced to agree at the outset that he has read all the terms and conditions of the contract and understands everything.  That may be quite an unreasonable thing to make the consumer agree to, especially if the contract such as a pension plan or an insurance bond, is necessarily complex.

In May 2010 the Financial Services Authority censored Integrity Financial Solutions Limited, a company based in Hampshire, in respect of its direct sales of geared traded endownment policy portfolios.

This is a bit of a mouthful.  So let me explain.  Mortgage endownment policies are taken out by lots of people who decide to dispose them for one reason or another.  Usually this is because they sold the house and redeemed the mortgage which the endownment policy supported.  You can either surrender these policies when no longer required or sell them on the open market.  There is a market for these.

The product Integrity were flogging was a portfolio of these second hand policies, assigned to the unfortunate client and purchased with a loan from a bank.  So the proceeds of the endownment policies had to keep pace with the interest and provide a bit more in order for the investment to work at all. 

The problem, obvious to anyone who knows anything about endownment policies, is that the proceeds of an endownment policy, almost always a With Profits policy, are largely discretionary i.e. the life assurance company issuing the policy only pays out what it can afford to distribute.  These days that is not very much. 

It follows that these geared arrangements (gearing is a reference to the borrowing to support the purchase) had a big risk that the amount owed to the lender, including interest, would not be matched by the proceeds of the policies.

That such an arrangement was sold to the public as low risk is simply ludicrous. 

Integrity Financial Solutions Limited is in liquidation.  Even so there should be compensation available through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if there are no insurers (which I do not know at the moment) to pick up the bill.

More interesting is the role of the lenders.  It seems to me that they have some answers to give as to how they managed to make loans to ordinary consumers underpinning such a ridiculous arrangement.

I have one such client (whose claim is going well) and I shall be interested to meet others so that experience and costs can be shared.

People with complaints against financial services firms such as banks, IFAs and life insurance companies often have the option of putting their complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (known universally as FOS).  In many ways this is a first class organisation offering pain free redress to the consumer.  Its services are free, its process does not involve courtroom confrontation (as it operates on paper) and it has a reputation for being independent and tough on recalcitrant banks, IFAs etc. 

Because compliance requirements make financial services firms inform consumers about the FOS, it is often thought that this is the only, or at least the first, place to go for redress. Some IFAs tell clients they have to use FOS, but that may be all about the charges they will make for assisting them.

Claims handling companies will only use FOS, as they can take a slice of the money awarded.
When consumers consult us, we always consider the FOS as an avenue for redress.  There are many reasons to use it, but it has limitations.  
However there is a real choice between FOS and the courts.

In advising clients I usually use a table of comparisons to set out the pros and cons of each, I reproduce this below:

Ombudsman	Courts
Operates in an investigative way	You have to gather all the evidence yourself
No trial (but few settlements)	A trial if not settled (but usually are)
You do not see the opponent?s papers	Papers are disclosed (including yours)
Limited to awarding £100,000 (£150,000 for complaints received after 1st January 2012).	No limit on jurisdiction
Can award other than money (eg top up of fund)	Can only award money (in this sort of case
Does not award costs (usually)	Loser pays winners costs (usually
No appeal	Appeal to higher courts
You need not accept award (but opponent is bound)	Both parties bound
Sometimes indifferent quality	Judges usually high quality
Not bound by strit precedent	bound strictly by law
Understands industry	May not have special knowledge
Truth can be concealed as no cross examination or disclosure of papers	Truth will usually come out
Low cost	Can be very costly

The points to remember are:

1. It is best to decide whether you are going to use the courts or the Ombudsman at the outset.  If you choose to use the Ombudsman, and you do not get a satisfactory result, you may find that the limitation period for using the courts has expired whilst you have been waiting for the Ombudsman.  You also have the psychological hill to climb of having already lost in one forum.
   
   
2. FOS does not tell you how much your claim is worth.  We have had several clients who have gone to FOS and have won their case only to find that the award that they get is insufficient to cover their losses.  So they have to reject the award and start all over again.
   
   
3. FOS often does not award any definite sum. It makes an order that the recalcitrant firm calculate the losses on a particular basis. The complainant then has to decide whether to accept the award or not, not knowing what money he is accepting.  That can lead to unfairness if the firm carries out the calculation of redress in an unfair way ? far from uncommon, I am sorry to say.
   
   
4. FOS can only award up to £100,000 (£150,000 for complaints received after 1st January 2012).  Many people do not realise the size of their claims, particularly in pension matters.
   
   
5. FOS claims handlers are of very mixed quality. Some are good, but many are really poor.
   
   
6. FOS does not always show itself to be independent and can be a little ?political?.  This can assist the consumer, of course, if he has what may be described as a "fashionable" complain such as endowment insurance mis-selling.
   

As a broad rule of thumb we tend to advise a client that if the claim is worth £50,000 or less FOS is often likely to provide a more satisfactory result.  However the courts are on the whole quicker than FOS and, because costs follow the event, if you use professional help, you can usually get a more cost effective result from the courts.

One option which some clients like in small cases is to use FOS but to get us to help them with key parts of the process.  The most important part in a FOS matter is the letter of complaint to the firm complained about. This should be detailed and written with an understanding of the FSA?s rules for the conduct of business and FOS?s known policy on a particular issue, if there is one.

Such an approach is often cost effective and does not commit the client legal fees as large as would be incurred if a solicitor had the running of the whole matter from beginning to end.

I am in the early stages of helping an action group comprising victims of Cameron Farley Limited.

Cameron Farley was a business run from Edinburgh by a man called Stephen Farley.  It was a completely unauthorised financial services firm which took money from the public and traded it on a foreign exchange platform in New York run by Gain Capital.  The FSA visited Cameron Farley?s offices in April 2007, and found out what was going on but failed to close the business down until September 2008.  In the meantime members of the public had continued to ?invest? with Mr Farley and significant amounts of their money were lost.  

Mr Farley is now bankrupt in Scotland and the company is in liquidation.  Grant Thornton are doing their best as liquidators to recover money for the unfortunate investors.
There is however a certain amount that I believe investors could do for themselves.  My proposals are set out in my letter to the founder of the action group, Martin Popham and is published on their website at fsauklegalaction.com.  
This is all at a very early stage but I am keen that investors in Cameron Farley should be in touch with the action group or direct with me.  Whilst the way forward is not yet completely clear, I am sufficiently persuaded that there is a worthwhile case to be made for me to put a considerable amount of effort into this (free of charge at this stage) in order to assist investors.

There are surprisingly a large number of unauthorised financial firms in this country and the FSA is notoriously lax about closing them down.  Investors in other such businesses are also very welcome to be in touch with me for an informal discussion without any obligation, about what can be done.

Our biggest project so far has been in connection with Equitable Life which got into financial difficulties in 2000 and closed to new business.  We have conducted a number of claims against Equitable Life on behalf of its policyholders, the largest of which was a class action involving over 400 With Profits Annuitants.

Because each of these claims ended on confidential terms at Equitable Life?s request I am not permitted to say whether they were successful or not.  However, I can say that our clients are delighted with what we have achieved.
We have recently settled a further 11 cases some of them with an international dimension.  Currently we have one case left.

The story of our involvement with Equitable Life?s unfortunate policyholders illustrates that with good legal advice the ordinary citizen can contest the actions of large financial institutions and obtain an outcome which is satisfactory to them.  What is particularly telling is that many of our Equitable clients had, before consulting us, written countless letters to their MPs, the Financial Services Authority and everybody whom the newspapers would indicate could help them.  Many put claims to the Financial Ombudsman Service, some of which were successful, but many of which were thrown out without even being considered.

I take the view that the law is there to be enforced equally and impartially, without regard to the power or financial strength of the parties.  Modern litigation techniques confer equality of arms in a way which is (for England) as new as it is refreshing.

I am currently conducting a series of claims against (mostly) high street banks who advised their customers to invest in AIG's Enhanced Variable Rate Fund.

AIG is an American insurance company that produced investment products which were wrapped up in a notional insurance policy.

Aimed at wealthy people, AIG's Premier Access Bond was billed as a secure, low risk substitute for deposit accounts. It promised attractive rates of interest on each of its two Variable Rate Funds: the Standard Variable Rate and Enhanced Variable Rate.

When AIG got into difficulties in the Autumn of 2008 there was a run on the Enhanced Variable Rate Fund.

AIG closed the fund and banks gave investors the option of either taking half their money and reinvesting the other half in a new fund called Protected Recovery Fund - or taking a reduced pay out in December 2008.

As the Protected Recovery Fund promised a guarantee of all their money in July 2012, most investors chose to follow their banks' advice.

Our main issues were:

• Why were so many customers recommended to opt for the Enhanced Variable Rate Fund when the Standard Variable Rate Fund was much more secure?
• Why did the banks recommend customers take out an insurance bond? (A single premium non-qualifying life policy that may have tax advantages for higher rate taxpayers who intend to be lower rate tax payers or non-tax payers when they eventually take their benefits.) As we were looking at wealthy people who would always be higher rate tax payers, the bond was irrelevant.
• Was the Protected Recovery Fund a sensible investment?  If so, did AIG investors have to give credit for the benefit of their investment in the PRF when they received it (presumably) in July 2012 or shortly thereafter?

We are helping a large number of clients to make claims against their banks.  We have had one trial.  In that case the Judge found on all material facts in favour of our client, but surprisingly found that the negligence of HSBC did not cause his loss but rather that an unforeseen run on the Enhanced Variable Rate Fund did.  That decision is under appeal to the Court of Appeal and we are expecting a hearing in May 2012.

A number of other clients' claims have been resolved.  It is normal in financial services matters for settlements to be confidential.  I am not going into details here, but I know that we have a number of happy clients as a result of what we have been able to do for them.

In the meantime the FSA has intervened by fining Coutts £6.3 m for the same breaches of the conduct of business rules of which we complain in all our cases.  Actually to be fair to Coutts, of a dismal bunch, they were certainly not the worst.  A scheme has been set up to compensate Coutts' clients (of whom we have two).  The basis of compensation is yet to be announced.

We take the view that those investors who put their money into the Protected Recovery Fund do not have to give credit for the gains in the fund between December 2008 (when their investments were made) and whenever they withdraw them. Most people seem to be waiting until July 2012.  The banks unsurprisingly take the contrary view and this issue remains unresolved.  Either way there are certainly losses deserving compensation as the FSA made plain in their notice in respect of the fine they imposed on Coutts.

We anticipate satisfactory outcomes for all our clients, but, because of the usual rules on confidentiality, you cannot expect my trumpeting every success.  That is, in any event, not my style.