Leggat - LLOYDS AND THE TICKETUS DEAL

[ian1964 10,720]

LLOYDS BANK may have been behind the sale of Rangers season tickets by Craig Whyte to Ticketus for £24.4m BEFORE he owned Rangers.

 

 

And that could lead to seriously hard questions being raised in the House of Commons.

 

 

David Murray has issued a statement which categorically denies that he had any knowledge of the Whyte deal with Ticketus.

 

 

And a source close to Murray and with impeccable contacts in the City of London and the wider business world, has hinted that it was Lloyds who may have facilitated the deal between Ticketus and Whyte.

 

 

That would make sense.

 

 

For without the now controversial Ticketus millions Whyte could not have paid off the £18m Rangers owed Lloyds. And getting that money in May was the only priority for Lloyds� with Lloyds seemingly giving no thought to what damage any new owner may wreck on Rangers.

 

 

If true it once again shows just how David Murray was â??markedâ? by conman Whyte, but calls into question the Lloyds banking practice.

 

 

And as Lloyds is 43 per cent owned by the taxpayer it opens the way for Westminster MPs to call Lloyds chief executive, Antonio Horta-Osorio to the Bar of the House of Commons to be questioned by Parliament, under oath.

 

 

Failure to attend would be treated as contempt of court and lead to the embattled Lloyds chief being arrested. Lloyds are now in hock to the British Government to the tune of £3.8BILLION.

 

 

There have always been concerns about the way Lloyds treated Rangers after they took over the Halifax Bank of Scotland. It was just about that time, in 2008, David Murray stood down as chairman of Rangers and resigned as a director.

 

 

Common currency in financial circles was that his hand was forced by Lloyds who had also taken over the banking arrangements for the Murray Group, which was then experiencing hard times.

 

 

But two men with Murray connections, Mike McGill and Donald Muir, then joined the Rangers board. McGill was said to be there to represent Murrayâ??s interests, for David, though no longer a director, was still the owner.

 

 

The popular perception of Muir was that he was the Lloyd Bankâ??s hatchet man on the Ibrox board, put there to push through the cuts which saw the debt to Lloyds slashed.

 

 

Through the shrewd work of chairman Alastair Johnston and director Paul Murray, despite the debt being halved, sufficient resources were still provided to enable Walter Smith to build a team which won three-in-a-row, plus four cups.

 

 

It was as Rangers closed in on that third title that Lloyds are believed to have turned up the heat on David Murray whose Murray Groupâ??s recovery plan was thought to be dependent on Lloyds backing.

 

 

It has never been denied by Lloyds that they put pressure on David to sell and impose a condition of sale that the £18m was paid off to Lloyds right away.

 

 

Paul Murray offered £20m plus a plan to continue with what was his proven ability to reduce the debt in stages while still making sure the companyâ??s product, in this case the Rangers team, was successful.

 

 

Lloyds would not accept this offer from Paul Murray, a man who has an impeccable business history as a good corporate citizen.

 

 

Instead, they preferred to see David get just a quid for his 85per cent Rangers shareholding from Craig Whyte, a man whose business history even then was murky and who we now know to be a conman who has wrecked havoc on Rangers and driven them to the brink of extinction.

 

 

If you believed in conspiracies you would wonder at just what motivated Lloyds to act in such a way.

 

 

Had Dermot Desmond, Peter Lawwell and the Green Brigade been making the decisions for Lloyds they could not have come up with a better plan to ruin Rangers.

 

 

Not that I am suggesting for a moment that Dermot Desmond, Peter Lawwell and the Green Brigade were in any way involved.

 

 

For the moment, the immediate priority for Paul Murray and his associates is to save Rangers.

 

 

However, there are others, notably MPs and members of the House of Lords from both major British political parties at the REAL centre of power, Westminster, who are now starting to take an interest in the role Lloyds have played in all of this.

 

 

David Murray has already been grilled by the administrators, along with his man on the board from 2008 until 2011, Mike McGill.

 

 

Donald Muir, seen as representing Lloyds interests in the Ibrox boardroom over the same period, may be next on the list to be questioned by the men from administrators, Duff and Phelps.

 

 

Now, with a powerful, influential and well connected source in the City, believed to be close to David Murray, in touch with politicians, financiers and other senior bankers, Lloyds could soon be forced to explain themselves to the House of Commons.

 

 

David Murray, as I pointed out yesterday, has been turned over by Craig Whyte. He has been conned rotten. Knowing him, I do not believe it is a matter he will allow to rest, despite the continued Lloyds Bank involvement with his now resurgent Murray Group.

 

 

Questions in The House, indeed!

[Bluedell 5,611]

I fail to see what he is suggesting Lloyds have done wrong.

[forlanssister 3,111]

I fail to see what he is suggesting Lloyds have done wrong.

 

I think he's alluding to a clause in the SPA where it stated Whyte needed the clubs or Lloyds agreement to enter into such an undertaking, and hinting that perhaps Llyods assisted Whyte in obtaining "Financial assistance" as a result of their possible actions, it is also just as possible that Lloyds in fact did no such thing.