Storm Financial Group

[Judd]

........

In the end, there was just too tempting an opportunity there for someone - a flood on cheap shares just waiting to be scooped up when the Storm people were sold down......

I think you're stretching it a bit on that aspect. When Colonial closed the funds around mid-December 2008 (I could be wrong on that date/year so I stand to be corrected) the Parliamentary Inquiry was informed that following redemptions (over $500M) and market downturn, the Storm badged indexed funds went from $700M to $44M.

I've just had a look at the STW index fund (which tracks the ASX 200) update of 17 December 2008. The NAV was $33.12 per unitl and BHP alone accounted for 15,054 shares of that particular fund, CBA 6,022 shares and so on. The value of the fund on that day was about $820M. The volume, ie turn over, for BHP is around 16M shares per day and that of CBA some 4M shares per day. If the Storm badged indexed funds reflected a similar composition then then "flood of cheap shares'' would hard pressed to qualify as a drop in the ocean of the trading for that particular day.

 

[MrEuro]

The answer is both have left - not by their own volution. What happened was very interesting...When they had to testify at the public hearing they were both on 'leave'. So when asked where they worked they could honestly say CGI/CBA. Everything looked above board and The Bank was standing by their employees. Clothier and Kamal were visibly agitated. The CBA Barristers were sitting at the benches like Vultures watching and listening to every word. Of course if Clothier or Kamal said anything agianst the Bank their entitlements would be at risk - so they toed the corporate line. Once the examination was over Clothier and Kamal left their employment quietly and the Bank slipped away like the serpents they are.

They have certainly left and no longer there. Scapegoats

 

[Solly]

They have certainly left and no longer there. Scapegoats

MrEuro, it is interesting that you use the word "Scapegoats".
If you or anybody else knows the current contact details of Messers Clothier
and Arnaout I would appreciate if you could email or PM me.

I have a general interest with the views of many of the
participants in this event.

 

[maccka]

Hello all,

Today was a big day for ex-Storm investors who are connected to CBA (and associated subsidaries).


Compensation for investors (Stuart Washington)

CBA to pay Storm victims $200m (Stuart Washington - possibly same as previous link)

http://www.businessday.com.au/break...rm-clients-reach-agreement-20100224-p0zv.html (EVAN SCHWARTEN) Slightly premature to say agreement has been reached at this point imho.

CBA's $200m deal to calm the Storm (Anthony Klan, Andrew Fraser)

CBA boss calms Storm, woos dudded investors (Elizabeth Knight)

BoQ won't follow CBA with compensation scheme over Storm Financial collapse (Sara Rich)

cheers
maccka

 

[Solly]

"Storm compo deal stirs mixed response"

"The long-awaited compensation scheme for Commonwealth Bank of Australia investors in collapsed adviser Storm Financial was launched yesterday and came under fire from lawyers planning legal actions."

More by Duncan Hughes in the Australian Financial Review Feb 24 2010.
(over to you Quincy)

 

[Solly]

Hello all,

Today was a big day for ex-Storm investors who are connected to CBA (and associated subsidaries).


Compensation for investors (Stuart Washington)

CBA to pay Storm victims $200m (Stuart Washington - possibly same as previous link)

http://www.businessday.com.au/break...rm-clients-reach-agreement-20100224-p0zv.html (EVAN SCHWARTEN) Slightly premature to say agreement has been reached at this point imho.

CBA's $200m deal to calm the Storm (Anthony Klan, Andrew Fraser)

CBA boss calms Storm, woos dudded investors (Elizabeth Knight)

BoQ won't follow CBA with compensation scheme over Storm Financial collapse (Sara Rich)

cheers
maccka

maccka,

Thanks for the links, I've had a bit of a big night of discussion with my Stormer mate.

Also in Evan Schwarten's AAP article
"CBA and Storm reach historic agreement"

http://www.news.com.au/business/cba-and-storm-reach-historic-agreement/story-e6frfm1i-1225833666132

This is where I think there will be further discussion and some may not be feel that this is adequate.

"Mr Scattini said customers who took out margin loans to invest with Storm would be remunerated for 90 per cent of the funds they used as security on the loan, provided the value of their investment slipped below the margin call level in the second half of 2008."

And I see that it's also reported that Sean McArdle isn't too impressed with the offering...

 

[pegasus]

"Storm compo deal stirs mixed response"

"The long-awaited compensation scheme for Commonwealth Bank of Australia investors in collapsed adviser Storm Financial was launched yesterday and came under fire from lawyers planning legal actions."

More by Duncan Hughes in the Australian Financial Review Feb 24 2010.
(over to you Quincy)

This is another decoy by the bank to try and look like the 'good guys'...the public inquiry showed the data coming from CGI was corrupted. The department was in dissaray during the latter half of 2008 with management running around in circles. So, whose data are they going to use to take clients back to 90%? Who will reconcile units sold, when they were sold and prices sold at for each of the 2000 clients!? What day are they going to use for each person when CGI/CBA didn't know what was going on from minute to minute?

Another interesting point - the CBA used negative equity within Storm (the company) to call in all loans and sink the business - what happens there? Will they repay negative equity to the liquidaters?

 

[nessark]

Hey guys, i searched on Google to find info about Emmanuel and Julie Cassimatis to see what they studied at uni....does anyone know if they even had a financial/business background prior to founding Storm Financial? I could find no info on this as all the news is on the company failure....

 

[Julia]

I'm surprised none of the Stormers have so far made any comment about this outcome.

Most of the clients – who had an average of $1 million invested in a high-risk margin loan portfolio – will get cash compensation based on equity ahead of the collapse a year ago.

This seems generous to me. That seems to assume they would have protected that equity when the market fell. From the comments earlier in this thread, no such protective plan was even discussed, and most of the Stormers didn't seem to have much understanding of capital preservation.

 

[Defender]

Why Storm Failed...my theory

I’m a first timer here, but have read a quite a few of the Storm comments. As an ex-Storm client, I have an opinion as to why Storm failed to saves its clients. In our mid-50s, my wife & I joined at a time when we believed we should have professionals looking after our investments. Although we had done OK over the years, we had made plenty of wrong decisions along the way as well.
Storm was recommended to us by a business associate, and from what we could determine they had looked after their clients investments safely through the 1987 crash and all those that had followed. Any Storm clients we met were very happy with the way their investments were managed. According to information, nobody had ever received a margin call. Storm indicated that expected returns would merely track the major indices...hardly greedy, it sounded more a conservative approach! We had been running a small margin loan up to this point under our own initiatives, so it was not new to us, and we understood the basics of how it worked. Their advisor was never pushy. They merely told it how it was, explained everything we needed to understand, and left it to us to make a decision. After about 3-4 months, we decided to proceed (March 2006).
Greed did not come into the equation for us, nor any of the other clients we know personally. For us, it was a view to paying a professional to manage our investments more efficiently than we could on our own. We probably joined Storm at the time when Cassimatis had plans to float the business. I now believe that, that became his No 1 goal. He needed to show impressive company growth, which he did (100%+ pa for several years), to impress potential investors. And as well as acquisitions of smaller advisory firms, increasing client borrowings were part of that as well (not that we had any idea of what was going on in the background, at that stage).
Incompetent? Cassimatis is plenty of things, but he is by no means incompetent! I’m sure he could have got investors through the GFC, as he had done during earlier crashes...even at those higher LVRs. However, he had special deals in place (we didn’t know about this at the time) with the margin lenders, which he believed would carry us through. If he felt the only option was to scale everyone back, it would expose a weakness is his case to prospective investors on his next attempt to float the business. If he had the banks on his side, supporting Storm clients through the crash, it could be seen in a more positive light for the public float. So he gambled on this course of action as opposed to scaling back our LVRs, as he did during previous crashes.
In summary, Cassimatis did his very best to optimize his chances of a successful float, with the interests of his clients at some lower level of priority. Why he didn’t start winding back LVRs earlier might reflect the level of faith he had in his agreement with the margin lenders. I don’t think that passing him off as a fool or incompetent explains it.
Cassimatis is a very polished performer & presenter. He knows the human emotions intimately, and how to handle them, what to say and how to say it. This special skill he has refined has stood him well in dealings with his clients as well as major banking players...mark of a good conman!

 

[DocK]

I'm surprised none of the Stormers have so far made any comment about this outcome.



This seems generous to me. That seems to assume they would have protected that equity when the market fell. From the comments earlier in this thread, no such protective plan was even discussed, and most of the Stormers didn't seem to have much understanding of capital preservation.

I suspect the reason there haven't been comments from "the stormers" is because most of us know that any compensation will be regarded as generous to quite a few of the regular posters on this thread. My understanding of the possible compensation for those that held margin loans with CGI is: (from businessday.com.au link below)

The average Commonwealth Bank customer had a Storm margin loan of $1 million.

Under the agreed compensation principles, the investor would have had equity of $110,000 if the margin call had been made at 90 per cent. The compensation would be 90 per cent of this amount, or about $100,000.

This appears, to me at least, to be fair given that CGI failed to make a margin call when it should have (disputed) and most ex-storm clients had funds in "dam accounts" which could have been used to meet such calls. Choosing to sell investments and get out of the market entirely or choosing to meet margin calls as they are made are two different options. Many ex-stormers have attested to having avenues available to them to meet margin calls - had they had that option and not been sold out without notice instead. Disclosure - I did not have a margin loan with CGI and did not receive a margin call. My take on this outcome is that CBA has accepted that it has a case to answer on the way it handled the margin call/inaccurate data issue. I'd also question whether the average margin loan was $1 million. At a guess I'd say there were a few very large loans of a few million, and the majority would be rather less - so someone who had a margin loan of $500,000 may be compensated to the tune of $50,000 - doesn't seem overly generous to me.

As far as the investment loans secured by property are concerned (and this does concern me), the proposal is:

The principles also include a commitment to review home loans given to often elderly investors, using the standards of a prudent banker.

If a property was found, for example, to be overvalued when the loan was awarded or that people were given loans they had no ability to repay, the loan would be scaled back to a loan that would have been awarded by a prudent banker.

Under the principles, the ''imprudent'' portion of the loan and its interest would be written off.

http://www.businessday.com.au/business/compensation-for-investors-20100223-p0oh.html

This seems fair at the very least to me given the very questionable valuation and information sharing practices that were being indulged in by storm and the CBA at the time, but were not disclosed to clients of both. Under the proposed resolution, if a property was fairly valued and the borrower had the means to service the debt there will be no compensation - again, doesn't seem overly generous to me

 

[Pindibog]

I suspect the reason there haven't been comments from "the stormers" is because most of us know that any compensation will be regarded as generous to quite a few of the regular posters on this thread. My understanding of the possible compensation for those that held margin loans with CGI is: (from businessday.com.au link below)



This appears, to me at least, to be fair given that CGI failed to make a margin call when it should have (disputed) and most ex-storm clients had funds in "dam accounts" which could have been used to meet such calls. Choosing to sell investments and get out of the market entirely or choosing to meet margin calls as they are made are two different options. Many ex-stormers have attested to having avenues available to them to meet margin calls - had they had that option and not been sold out without notice instead. Disclosure - I did not have a margin loan with CGI and did not receive a margin call. My take on this outcome is that CBA has accepted that it has a case to answer on the way it handled the margin call/inaccurate data issue. I'd also question whether the average margin loan was $1 million. At a guess I'd say there were a few very large loans of a few million, and the majority would be rather less - so someone who had a margin loan of $500,000 may be compensated to the tune of $50,000 - doesn't seem overly generous to me.

As far as the investment loans secured by property are concerned (and this does concern me), the proposal is:



http://www.businessday.com.au/business/compensation-for-investors-20100223-p0oh.html

This seems fair at the very least to me given the very questionable valuation and information sharing practices that were being indulged in by storm and the CBA at the time, but were not disclosed to clients of both. Under the proposed resolution, if a property was fairly valued and the borrower had the means to service the debt there will be no compensation - again, doesn't seem overly generous to me

We are just going to reinvent the wheel accusing Stormers of greed and all their fault again. I agree with you Dock. Joke. CBA enabled Storm to put everyone in this position and pulled everyone out at the lowest time in the market. Deny, Deny...ooh now we apologise and want to make things right. Load of crap. What about all the pain/stress/bullying by banks/suffering which they caused. The break fees they charged us all when we paid the ML out as they would not let us use it other than stay in their CBA accellerator account. I was able to meet all MC which would have followed with the market. Do they take that into account. My lost dividends and growth.
Why do they now get a second chance to make the decision they should have at the time by informing their clients and expecting they would pull out. All consequences that have occurred following their action on my uninformed behalf is their fault and I should be compensated as such.
Its only about improving their brand, not about taking responsibility.
Lets hope all cases are compensated on individual facts and not the blanket compensation which is being presented. Corruption is rife. You just need to look at the JPC and the CBA's answers which have never been taken to task. Will they ever????

 

[Solly]

"Other deals on the way for Storm clients"

"Major banks are working to settle disputes with former clients of Storm Financial following a landmark deal between the Commonwealth Bank and devastated investors."

http://www.smh.com.au/business/other-deals-on-the-way-for-storm-clients-20100224-p365.html

 

[specialed]

Does anyone know when ASIC / Worrels will actually report and has anyone heard any whispers as to whether it will actually be worth the wait ?

I no longer get angered by those who continue the line of "the Greedy investor", but do get a little frustrated that the identity of those who are so ignorant of the facts of this whole affair are hidden by the use of nicknames. Anyone who still believes the CBA is simply rewarding bad investment decisions with a payout that will cost them significantly more then $300 million has little understanding of any of this and their contributions add nothing to this debate.

They do however confirm my fear of where society is heading. It would appear the gene pool of life is becoming more of a muddy pond with the sludge at the bottom getting thicker and thicker..

 

[Solly]

Does anyone know when ASIC / Worrels will actually report and has anyone heard any whispers as to whether it will actually be worth the wait ?

I no longer get angered by those who continue the line of "the Greedy investor", but do get a little frustrated that the identity of those who are so ignorant of the facts of this whole affair are hidden by the use of nicknames. Anyone who still believes the CBA is simply rewarding bad investment decisions with a payout that will cost them significantly more then $300 million has little understanding of any of this and their contributions add nothing to this debate.

They do however confirm my fear of where society is heading. It would appear the gene pool of life is becoming more of a muddy pond with the sludge at the bottom getting thicker and thicker..

specialed, I believe that Tony D'Aloisio will make a statement early next month. I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

Here's a flashback to Bernie Ripoll and his statement about the collapse.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/04/07/2536778.htm

 

[Julia]

This appears, to me at least, to be fair given that CGI failed to make a margin call when it should have (disputed) and most ex-storm clients had funds in "dam accounts" which could have been used to meet such calls.

OK, fair comment. But wasn't Storm supposed to be monitoring this situation? Shouldn't it have been Storm who took responsibility for getting the client to come up with the extra cash or selling out at the appropriate time?
My concern is that this mea culpa by the CBA seems to be letting Cassimatis off the hook. Is that fair, DocK?

Choosing to sell investments and get out of the market entirely or choosing to meet margin calls as they are made are two different options.

Quite true. But my earlier point was that the agreement by CBA seems to assume clients would have probably come up with the extra cash and then maintained their positions. If they had done this, they would have found their net wealth falling as did everyone else who didn't exit the falling market.
My question went to how many Stormers would actually have exited at this stage, preserving their profits to date, rather than just letting their capital fall with the market. I suspect not many. That was my point and why I suggested it was fairly generous.

As far as the investment loans secured by property are concerned (and this does concern me), the proposal is:
http://www.businessday.com.au/business/compensation-for-investors-20100223-p0oh.html[/EMAIL

This seems fair at the very least to me given the very questionable valuation and information sharing practices that were being indulged in by storm and the CBA at the time, but were not disclosed to clients of both. Under the proposed resolution, if a property was fairly valued and the borrower had the means to service the debt there will be no compensation - again, doesn't seem overly generous to me

Agreed. The account I read of the settlement was in today's "The Australian". No longer have the paper but was rather surprised at the implication in the way the article was written that it was the CBA who inflated the property values and borrowers' incomes.
Throughout this thread, no one has actually been able to say where this inflating of values occurred, and I guess most of us assumed it would have been by Cassimatis.

If that's wrong, and the bank has indeed exaggerated dollar amounts, then for sure they do need to provide compensation, although I still can't understand how the client didn't - when reading the loan paperwork - see the figures involved in servicing the loan (surely these were provided???) and understand that the amounts involved did not represent either the value of their home or their income.

Maybe I'm quite misunderstanding this situation.

And, considering I will already be being accused of 'blaming the victims', I do have a concern that if Stormers (and Cassimatis) are able to take the view that the whole arrangement was sensible and conservative just because CBA are coming up with some dollars to save their reputation, these Storm clients will not be any wiser for the future and could therefore fall into similar traps all over again.

 

[capt_thunderbolt]

I caught the tail end of this interview when I was driving home today - I have not listened to it in full - thought it might be of interest.

http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2010/02/storm-clients-compensation-offer.html?site=brisbane&program=612_drive

Cheers
Captain

 

[DocK]

OK, fair comment. But wasn't Storm supposed to be monitoring this situation? Shouldn't it have been Storm who took responsibility for getting the client to come up with the extra cash or selling out at the appropriate time?
My concern is that this mea culpa by the CBA seems to be letting Cassimatis off the hook. Is that fair, DocK?

Of course storm should have been monitoring the situation, but that shouldn't let CGI off the hook if they also dropped the ball. Should we adopt the attitude that if my FP is incompetent/dishonent then it's OK for my bank to be as well? If I can't get compensation from Cassimatis then I shouldn't be entitled to it from another party also at some degree of fault? Cassimatis will continue to be investigated by ASIC and no doubt will be pursued by creditors and ex-clients regardless of any payout made by CBA. Don't lose sight of the fact that ex-stormers were also clients of CGI/CBA and were/are entitled to the same duty of care as any other of their clients, regardless of who referred them.

Quite true. But my earlier point was that the agreement by CBA seems to assume clients would have probably come up with the extra cash and then maintained their positions. If they had done this, they would have found their net wealth falling as did everyone else who didn't exit the falling market.

I don't see it that way at all. The agreement by CBA assumes the exact opposite. It is based on the supposition that clients should have recieved a margin call at 90% LVR and been sold out, in which case they would have been left with 10% of their original investment amount - hence the offer to compensate 90% of what 10% equity would have been at that time. If the assumption was that clients would have met the call and stayed in, the offer should in fact be for a fair bit more as the market has improved markedly since margin calls would have/should have been made.

My question went to how many Stormers would actually have exited at this stage, preserving their profits to date, rather than just letting their capital fall with the market. I suspect not many. That was my point and why I suggested it was fairly generous.

Irrelevant really, in view of above. Who can say who would have exited and who would have stayed in? Either way, they would have been given the choice to be sold out and retain 10% of their capital, or meet the margin call from other resources, and possibly another, and have benefitted from the eventual recovery from March 2009, as did every other sitter-and-holder. Nobody is disputing that their capital would have declined if they had stayed in, and would still be less now than before the GFC, but most were in it for the very long term and if they opted to stay in would be looking at retaining their dividend income and regaining their capital over the following 5 - 10 years. Instead they've been denied the option of riding it out and have been hit with CGT and the loss of an income stream from dividends. The prevailing opinion these days seems to be that the market will eventually recover to the point where it once was or higher - a lot of ex-stormers were prepared to wait several years for that recovery if need be. In any case, whether they would have met calls, been sold out, stayed for the duration etc is irrelevant to the main issue under dispute between CGI clients and CGI - who should have made margin calls, and at what LVR. The amount of compensation has been calculated on the assumption that investments would have been liquidated to meet margin calls - and I'm sure many ex-clients will see this as far less than fair given the recovery that has taken place so far. I guess it's near to impossible to know, given the gift of hindsight, who would have cashed out and who wouldn't have - so we have compensation calculated on an assumption of liquidation at the first margin call that would have been faced. In reality it's impossible to know who would have been able to continue to meet interest payments from the dividend income they would have retained plus own resources, and who wouldn't have had any choice but to be sold out at 90%, so I guess the outcome is the only one-size-fits-all resolution that is fair.

 

[DocK]

Agreed. The account I read of the settlement was in today's "The Australian". No longer have the paper but was rather surprised at the implication in the way the article was written that it was the CBA who inflated the property values and borrowers' incomes.
Throughout this thread, no one has actually been able to say where this inflating of values occurred, and I guess most of us assumed it would have been by Cassimatis.

If that's wrong, and the bank has indeed exaggerated dollar amounts, then for sure they do need to provide compensation, although I still can't understand how the client didn't - when reading the loan paperwork - see the figures involved in servicing the loan (surely these were provided???) and understand that the amounts involved did not represent either the value of their home or their income.

Maybe I'm quite misunderstanding this situation.

I'm sure I posted about the valuation process at some time several months ago on this thread - can't really be bothered reading back through it to find it. As to income figures - who would know what was used. The only income figures I ever provided the CBA were for our original loan taken out a couple of years before the last "step". I can only assume the bank used them, plus whatever info they accepted from storm itself??? As I wanted my loan approved at the time (naturally I now wish it had been declined) I didn't really care. My gripe is not over whether I could afford a loan or not, I readily accept it was my decision to take on more debt, but it is over the valuation of my property used to secure extra debt - which I had no reason to suspect was not the CBA's usual conservative approach to valuations. I was left with debt that almost equaled the value of my property - which would normally not be the case if an inspection had been carried out and a valuer used, rather than a figure plucked from a desktop system based on heaven-knows-what. If I had been left with no option but to sell my home to repay debts (regardless of whose fault it was that I found myself in such a predicament) I would have been left with no equity in my home either - and this would have been due to my acceptance of the CBA's valuation of my home, which the CBA were happy to lend against. I guess the question is whether clients had a right to expect valuations to be accurate, and whether the CBA had a duty of care to ensure that they weren't lending against inflated valuations carried out imprudently. It would appear that an agreement has been reached that implies the valuation process used at the time was less than it should have been. I'm sure some will say it was up to the borrower to ensure that their home was worth what the bank said it was worth - personally I didn't have the time or expertise to be a property valuer myself and would never have dreamed that a bank valuation would be anything but on the conservative side. Again, with hindsight, should I have paid a registered valuer to make sure my banker knew its business?

As to the issue of borrower's incomes, my personal view is if you take on the loan you should know whether you can afford it or not, but again it appears that the legal view is that the bank has a duty to ensure a borrower can afford what they've applied for.

For the record, I've never seen loan documents that include valuation and income details. Valuations are often confidential to the lender, as they have carried out the valuation for their own purposes to ensure security of their loans at min 80% LVR, and unless arranged and paid for by the client are not the property of the client. The client does, however, know that the bank will not lend more than 80% of the value of the property offered as security for the loan. Income details are generally submitted on the loan application, which is held by the bank but is not included in the loan contracts and mortgage documents which the borrower signs. I'd say it is not uncommon for updates to income to be given verbally once the original loan application has been taken. Clients that obtained increases to their original loan over the years probably never signed another application, but merely submitted or verbally advised new income details. This is my experience in any case.
As these details were generally provided to a storm adviser, rather than directly to the bank, I guess we may never know if any embellishment occurred at either end. But to answer your question, no - the client wouldn't see the income figures used by the bank when signing the paperwork for a loan. Given the resolution agreed to by CBA, my own reading of it is that the CBA has acknowledged that usual lending guidelines may not have been applied to some lending to cba/storm clients. If it is found that valuations are correct and income details support the loans granted, then no compensation will be forthcoming.

And, considering I will already be being accused of 'blaming the victims', I do have a concern that if Stormers (and Cassimatis) are able to take the view that the whole arrangement was sensible and conservative just because CBA are coming up with some dollars to save their reputation, these Storm clients will not be any wiser for the future and could therefore fall into similar traps all over again.

I really don't want to play the blame game all over again. I cannot for the life of me imagine how any ex-stormer could possibly have avoided questioning the strategy (or more to the point the lack of strategy) used by storm over the past year or more. To think that any of us will "take the view that just because the CBA are coming up with some dollars to save their reputation, therefore the whole arrangement was sensible" - is quite a stretch, and giving very little credit to the ability of people to learn from mistakes and history. Even those who would do the same again would surely now admit that the level of gearing was far from the conservative level it was sold to them as. To be concerned that people who have seen their hard-earned life savings decimated, faced losing their homes (or have already lost them), been the subject of numerous media stories, been involved in resolution processes, numerous bank interviews etc, yet would do exactly the same thing over again is probably a waste of your concern Julia. I'm sure it's well-meant concern, and I don't mean to be condescending, but I'm also sure that most ex-stormers have spent enough sleepless nights worrying about their futures to have had second, third and fourth thoughts about the storm method, Cassimatis and their financial strategies going into the future. I was no doubt too trusting, gullible and financially naive when I followed the advice I received from my storm adviser, but to have someone wonder whether I'd do it all again in the future is a bit insulting from my perspective. I suppose I should only speak for myself, but I find it almost impossible to believe that the majority of ex-stormers haven't learnt anything at all from what we've been through. To see any compensation paid by the CBA in restitution for their shortcomings in the whole sorry saga as an endorsement of the strategy would be clutching at straws imo, and no doubt will be exactly what EC & JC and their few diehard followers will do - and I don't think they warrant anyone's concern!

 

[Judd]

Yes, not the best, Dock. However, a line from WH Auden's poem based on Breughel's "Fall of Icarus" springs to mind.

and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

And so shall it be. A big deal to "Stormers" but to the rest of us...............