In his view, this was by no means the end of the line. He would expect the case to go next to the new Supreme Court (which is the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords until 31 July) and if the shareholders lose there, perhaps even to the European Court of Human Rights.
(The parties to the case are the two biggest shareholders, RAB and SRM Global, and a few selected small shareholders working with the UK Shareholders Association.)
Once the legal challenge is resolved, the valuer can get on with his wrok. But it is part of the contention that the rules have been so rigged by the Government that they are wqasting money to employ him and might just as well be honest and say “we've taken your shares and we're going to give you nowt”
The view that he expressed was that the small shareholders for whom NRSSG speaks don't want derisory compensation, they want fairness. The big banks weren't nationalised. The Government stood behind them while they tried to launch rights issues which the Government underwrote. So it ended up with a dominant shareholding. In the case of Northern Rock, it could easily have done the same thing. Indeed, it has injected £3 billion as shares.
We might have been diluted to a very large extent, but we'd still have been shareholders in our company and could share in any upside – which obviously the Government expects, because it's planning to sell Northern Rock back to the private sector as soon as it can.
Clearly all this will be going on until the General Election next year, when I expect former shareholders will be reminded about the theft of their shares, and will hold politicians seeking their vote to account.
There's an easy way for them to get out of this situation – give us back our shares!
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