It just seems to get stranger and stranger.
At the Cairns session it was reported in a news article that Mr Dalle Cort "blamed the collapse on the ''product failure'' of margin loans. We couldn't possibly know,'' he said. ''The data coming through from the banks was bizarre.''
Yet in the same report another planner from a separate group stated that ''We did have CGI (Colonial Geared Investments) loans, and we did have managed trusts and in November, as with a lot of planners, we were really very, very actively managing our margin loans."
The implication being that the data coming from CGI to other planner groups was "clean" and able to be acted upon to manage margin loans. The other implication is that those margin loans where the planner had the authority to act, while busier than a one-armed paper hanger, did but Storm didn't.
That other planner is also reported to have said "It's not that the product failed at the end of the day, it's that the strategy failed.''
Hello all,
**SIGH** I was at both the Cairns and Brisbane sessions and have recordings that I took of every bit of testimony that was given. They were two VERY long days.
I have to say that I have found it very frustrating over the past few days to see the way some of the media have reported these sessions. Sometimes the "quotes" you see attributed to people in the news article above actually aren't true quotes. Words are left out by the journalist (in this case that doesn't necessary change the total meaning but in others it does). While that is not particularly an issue in the article that Judd is quoting here it definitely is in a number of the other articles that have been linked in this forum. In fact not only is misquoting a problem but also the fact that much of the context is removed from the quotes which changes the meaning of their quote.
After checking the recordings I can pretty much confirm that Dalle Cort did say what Judd reports above.
In talking about what SF was trying to do to help the clients while the market was falling and the problems SF was having with data.
Dalle Cort - "For a period of time - for over a month - that never changed. So how could we manage something we couldn't manage?"
More conversation regarding what SF was doing. Nothing that particularly offers much information - a brief mention of signing a piece of paper so when data did get back to being correct they could act.
Ripoll - "So you really didn't know at any given point what was happening with that particular product."
Dalle Cort - "Not that I didn't know. We couldn't possibly know. Because the data coming through from the banks was bizarre. It simply wasn't showing what was real."
Williams - "So you're saying that the monitoring of the market coming through from the banks simply wasn't keeping pace with the fall of the markets."
Dalle Cort - "Absolutely! Without a doubt. And it sickens me that they continually state that there was no problems with their systems."
After checking the recording (it will be backed soon by Hansard records) for the other planner from a separate group I can tell you that the financial planner Judd talks about here is Ms Joanne Tuck (I believe it was) and she gave the evidence about managing the margin loans of her own CGI clients. She did say that they were very, very actively managing the loans.
Regarding the data for CGI Margins Loans she said "We would go on to the internet and look at the margin loan balances. We would go on to the internet and value the portfolios ourselves."
She didn't actually say that the product didn't fail. She said "His [referring to Dalle Cort] comment that the product failed at the end of the day. Well I would say that his strategy failed at the end of the day".
She also admitted that her business was owned by a big bank. "My business and my partner's business is actually licensed by a licensed securities dealer who is owned, dare I say it, by a big bank". It would be interesting to know "which bank?".
A question I have been wondering about in the days since hearing this on Tuesday - If she was able to access clean data from CGI why did she need to go to the internet and value the portfolios by herself?
She admitted herself that some of her evidence seems like sour grapes but then suggested that she felt they were bloody well worth investigating.
tired
Maccka