Wednesday 27 April 2016

Kleptocracy UK?


The term "kleptocracy" was coined to define countries, often newly developing, in which the ruling elite creamed of the nation's wealth to the detriment of the welfare of ordinary people.  Something similar seems to be happening in Britain today, though the beneficiaries  are not exclusively the ruling elite as normally defined.

The demise of British Home Stores (BHS) is but the latest example.  This staple of the high street was bought by Philip Green (later "Sir" Philip and invited to be a minor member of Mr Cameron's government) for £200m, who put ownership of it in his non-dom wife's name (to avoid tax?), took at least around £500m out of it and then flogged it for £1 to Dominic Chappell, a former racing driver with no retail experience. Quite how much Mr Chappell has made out of it is not clear, though he appears to have moved £1.5million to his own advantage only days before BHS went "into administration" (ie bust) leaving a deficit in the pension fund of £571m.

Something similar happened earlier this century when what was left of  Britain's remaining motor company, British  Leyland, was bought of £10 by four businessmen calling themselves the Phoenix Corporation.  The company was relaunched as MG Rover and the government put in £16m to help it revive but to no avail. In 2005 it went bust, but not before the four businessmen had allegedly taken £42m out of it.  In this case the accounting firm Deloitte was fined ₤14 million for failing to recognise a conflict of interest. 

Who will be slapped on the wrist for the BHS deals?

This plundering of pension funds may not have been invented by the late newspaper publisher Robert Maxwell, but his raids on the pension fund of Mirror Group Newspapers caused the ploy to be well-publicised the early 1990s.  In this case Coopers &amp Lybrand Deloitte accountants “failed to report abuses” to pension fund trustees {Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte are now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)}.


More recently was the part privatisation of our Royal Mail at a one third discount, but not before the lucky private buyers were relieved of the Royal Mail's  pension fund liabilities, maybe as much as £10bn, which were taken over by the public purse..

And perhaps it's unfair speculation, but one cannot help wondering if the government's determination to turn all remaining local authority schools into "academies" is not at least partly motivated by the opportunity  to grab ownership of their playing fields, ready for sale to the private sector.

These events do not strictly speaking make it legitimate to describe the UK as a kleptocracy, since private individuals rather than public or elected officials are involved, but it is clear that our laws make it too easy assets to be acquired, often with the connivance of politicians and with the indulgence of the major accounting firms, by ruthless individuals with the necessary  nous but without any sense of moral responsibility.

We do not have a fair society, we are not "all in this together," and our political system is singularly failing to put the matter right.

10 comments:

  1. I find it strange that these shenanigans never seem to trouble the Taxpayers Alliance.

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    1. Yes, they're very selective about what upsets them.

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  2. Little Tripoli1 May 2016 at 07:00

    Have you read the accounts for BHS over the Green period? Because without having done so it's difficult to talk about the extent to which it was assert stripped - have you got a link to the relevant info? That would be really useful.

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    1. No I haven't I presume they are available from Companies House. I expect that the various enquiries which will follow the present furore will attempt to discover any commercially legitimate reason for over £500m being taken from the group and placed in a tax haven, whilst leaving a pension deficit of £571, and I await their findings with interest.

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  3. Little Tripoli1 May 2016 at 07:14

    Further: Royal Mail stock currently traded at 483, when the issue price was 442. Seems hard to argue that the latter was anything more than a reasonably good guess at the value of the company.

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    1. According to my memory, confirmed by http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30527392, the floatation price was 330p. Maybe the near doubling of the price to 615p on the first day of trading was "froth", as Vince Cable described it, but the parliamentary report quoted on the above site estimates that the real loss to the public purse by underpricing was some £180m

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    2. the parliamentary report quoted on the above site estimates that the real loss to the public purse by underpricing was some £180m

      That assumes that the stock could have been sold on day one at its current price, which is by no means certain: guessing the right price for an IPO is more a matter of luck than judgement, and there are plenty of actors who won't buy until it has been proven that the demand was there.

      Attempting a floatation of the Royal Mail only to have it flop due to lack of demand would be a worse outcome than the price rising (it would look like the markets lacked confidence in the Royal Mail, in the government, and in Britain in general), so it makes sense to pitch the initial price on the low side and thereby ensure a full initial sale.

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    3. Hmm... That seems to me to be a convenient theory to justify rewarding the haves (ie those who can afford to buy some share) over the have nots, who, along with everybody else, used to own the public utility.

      Today's price is 487.60, which is very close to a 50% profit for those who bought at 330. And remember a huge number of shares were bought by "preferred buyers" on the grounds that they would be long term investors, and they flogged them off within a week.

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    4. That seems to me to be a convenient theory to justify rewarding the haves (ie those who can afford to buy some share) over the have nots, who, along with everybody else, used to own the public utility

      Surely the real question is, is the utility better run now than it was then? That, after all, is the point of privatisation. I don't think anybody doubts that the customers of BT, or of BA, are better off since they were privatised.

      Are the customers of the Royal Mail getting a better service now than they were pre-privatisation?

      (I must admit I don't know, it all seems to work the same to me, but if it's doing the same service but requiring less subsidy from my taxes, then I'm still, as a customer, getting a better deal).

      And remember a huge number of shares were bought by "preferred buyers" on the grounds that they would be long term investors, and they flogged them off within a week.

      So what? Once a share is sold, then the company doesn't get any extra money from further resale, so it doesn't matter, to the company, whether that share is held long-term or is sold within a week. From the company's point of view, all that matters is that there is an investor; it really doesn't matter whether the name of that investor changes every ten years or every week.

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    5. 1. The fact remains that the shares were sold at two thirds of their market value. That's a pretty substantial discount to "tempt" investors.
      2. The preferred buyers received special treatment because they were expected to take a long-term interest in the industry. Many didn't, but cashed in as soon as possible.
      3. BT is more efficient largely because of advances in technology which would have happened under public ownership anyway, and probably owe much to public investment in education. I don't know much about BA today, though I had some very competent and caring service from them when they were BOAC.
      4. The price of stamps has been increased twice since privatisation, there is only one delivery a day and the timing is highly irregular.

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