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Equitable on wrong side of Fool poll
TS would never dream of suggesting the direction that the Equitable/Ernst & Young case at the High Court might be heading in. We simply enjoy the knockabout of the argument.
The finer details of the case, on which it will no doubt be decided, tend to send us heading straight to the (very pleasant) pubs of the Fleet Street area.
Not so the contributors to The Motley Fool, a discussion site where it seems anything goes and legal anxieties do not exist.
One contributor has set up a poll on the site asking 'Do you think [Equitable] will win its case against E&Y?'
The result, for Equitable, is not good. When we last looked 46 of what TS suspects is mostly policyholders, had voted no, while only seven said yes. If this is the case it doesn't say much for Equitable chief Vanni Treves' claim last week that policyholders 'overwhelmingly' support the action.
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The readers of the Motley Fool are the most interested and best informed Equitable Life audience, with 55,000 contributions in five years. However, its participants do tend toward to cynicism and conspiracy theories!
At last Wednesday's AGM of Equitable the chairman, Vanni Treves, reassured the 400 members present that the litigation, which claims £2,705m from ex auditors and ex directors, is absolutely on track.
It is early days, with just 25 days of the expected 100 Court days having yet been heard. We must therefore suspend disbelief and assume that the Society's hugely expensive silk, Iain Milligan QC (who is likely to earn £3m or so of the Society's costs estimated to total £40m plus), has some very big surprises to come up his sleeve - let's hope so for the sake of the 50,000 locked-in annuitants.
The independent board candidate John Newman FCA, who polled a repectable 30% of those who mandated votes, did however suggest that should, God forbid, the litigation go badly for the Society then, honourably, Vanni Treves should "consider his position" and resign on his 65th birthday on 3 November. After all, he'd still have Intertek Testing and Korn Ferry, plus two dozen other directorships to keep him in champagne!
See: http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=9311775
Posted by :Paul Braithwaite | May 23, 2005 8:18 PM