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As many of our members know, Nigel Henderson gave a truly heart felt speech at the Cambridge International Symposium On Economic Crime earlier this month. We've had a lot of feed back on this and this has prompted us to do a shorter edit of the speech because Nigel's questions “who among you....” need to be broadcast far and wide as an example of the totally unacceptable and totally immoral behaviour of some banks. I want to point out that SME Alliance never says all banks or all bankers are bad. Neither do we consider our remit to be “bank bashing.” From day 1 our remit has always been to lobby for 'access to justice' and to support owners of SMEs who have been abused by banks. Nigel's speech eloquently highlights exactly why we needed to form SME Alliance because it is nothing less than a travesty of justice he has had to make that speech after years of trying to get justice. Below is a written version of the extract we've taken. It may not be exactly the same as the speech because like all of us at the Symposium, we added or altered things on the day. Either way these are powerful words that need to be heard and we're very grateful to Nigel and his wife Norma for letting us share their shattering experiences in public. I sincerely hope someone in authority in RBS listens to this speech and decides to act with integrity to put things right for the Henderson's. It's never too late to do the right thing. Extract from Nigel Henderson's speech:
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Further to our blog about the Cambridge Symposium on Economic Crime, here is the links to the speeches of our members Nigel Henderson and Clive May. Both were I think exceptional speakers and have given very clear examples of exactly how bad bank conduct can be. In both these instances the bank concerned was RBS but, as many of us know, RBS don't have the exclusive on this kind of conduct. So called 'business support units' in all the major banks have caused havoc for SMEs and I hope these videos are widely viewed by bankers as well as their victims! These were shot on a GoPro filming from the back of the room so we couldn't do any fancy editing but it's what was said that's important. Hope you enjoy them (although enjoy is probably the wrong word). Please do retweet them and leave us your comments.
I won't go into detail about the speeches we made because Laura filmed all of the morning session and she's editing the videos now. One in particular is very sensitive and shocked everyone in the room to the point some of us were in tears. I hope to get permission to put this video up because the silence in the room while we all came to terms with what we were hearing says more than any words could ever say about the misery banks cause.
Mel Loades was hosting the afternoon session for us and when he opened the room up for questions there was an interesting debate on the merits of private criminal prosecutions. I have a feeling this debate will expand in the very near future!
It was great to meet some of our new Irish members who flew over specifically to come to our sessions – more about that soon as we will be doing a lot more with our Irish members very soon. We hope to have the videos up by tomorrow afternoon. Many thanks to all the SME Alliance members who attended and to all those who came to hear us. And as always a big thank you to Professor Barry Ryder and Angela Futter for the invitation to this brilliant event. |
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February 2019
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