The Justice for Ray Davies campaign has received a copy of Wendy Zeal's letter of 13.2.2014 to Ray Davies. Mrs Zeal is apparently a member of the "Executive Team Customer Services - Mortgages" at Halifax Plc. In her letter to Ray Davies, Mrs Zeal finally admits that she acts on behalf of Lloyds Banking Group, as her Lloyds Banking Group email address previously indicated. Readers will recall that Mrs Zeal was one of the Lloyds Banking Group officials who tried to suggest that the Ray Davies case was nothing to do with Lloyds Banking Group as it predated the acquisition by LBG of HBOS, of which Halifax Plc is a component. According to Mrs Zeal, Lloyds Banking Group believes that clearing "the outstanding balance" of Mr Davies' mortgage and giving him back the title deeds of his home qualifies as compensation for the decade of misery he endured as a result of business practices that saw former HBOS CEO James Crosby stripped of his knighthood in June 2013.
As Tony Aitken says: "This isn't about making Lloyds pay some huge sum to Ray in compensation. That in itself is an insult to him. This is about making a reasonable ex gratia payment to the Ray Davies to cover the money they took from him over the years and the money he had to spend on lawyers while he was trying to defend himself against their bullying and harassment."
HURRY UP AND DIE
By the time Lloyds Banking Group admitted tort through cancelling the outstanding balance of the mortgage, the original £ 50,000 had soared to over £ 94,000 by 2013. Readers will recall that a lawyer representing Lloyds Banking Group was pressing as recently as May 2012 for the elderly veteran of Britain's last major airborne assault to recognise the 'debt' by paying a nominal sum of £ 5.00 a week so that the bank, in the words of the solicitor acting for Mr Davies, would "be able to recoup their monies when either the property is sold or you pass away."
Meanwhile, Mr Horta-Osório told the BBC this month that Lloyds is "back to normal" and that his £1.7 million bonus for 2013 is "aligned with taxpayers' interests". He said: "I strongly believe you should link compensation with performance, and having increased our underlying profits by 140%, we thought it was appropriate to increase the bonus pool of the bank by 8%. The legacy issues were much higher than we had anticipated or than the regulator thought then, and we were absolutely committed to cleaning them and doing the right thing for customers... It is not a matter of financials, it is a matter of principle."
Commenting on the legacy issues cited by his boss, a source inside Lloyds Banking Group's London HQ who understandably preferred to remain anonymous remarked: "It's not about the twenty grand or so that we could pay Ray Davies to get you all to shut up about it. It's about avoiding a tidal wave of similar demands as a result of all this bad history we inherited when LBG bought HBOS."
Meanwhile, Mr Horta-Osório told the BBC this month that Lloyds is "back to normal" and that his £1.7 million bonus for 2013 is "aligned with taxpayers' interests". He said: "I strongly believe you should link compensation with performance, and having increased our underlying profits by 140%, we thought it was appropriate to increase the bonus pool of the bank by 8%. The legacy issues were much higher than we had anticipated or than the regulator thought then, and we were absolutely committed to cleaning them and doing the right thing for customers... It is not a matter of financials, it is a matter of principle."
Commenting on the legacy issues cited by his boss, a source inside Lloyds Banking Group's London HQ who understandably preferred to remain anonymous remarked: "It's not about the twenty grand or so that we could pay Ray Davies to get you all to shut up about it. It's about avoiding a tidal wave of similar demands as a result of all this bad history we inherited when LBG bought HBOS."
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