HBOS and the spirit of Christmas
According to the news, there is a protest going on outside the HBOS headquarters in Edinburgh on the night of their Christmas party related to the collapse of Farepak. Now, I understand that the staff of HBOS did not break the law and can happily sleep at night knowing they did their jobs correctly.
Consider this though, from what I was hearing on the radio today, HBOS recovered most of the £31 million that Farepak owed them. Again, nothing legally wrong with that. Meanwhile the Farepak savers will receive about 4p in the pound from what they put in. HBOS made £4.8 billion pounds in profit last year. To refund the Farepak savers all of their money would cost them £44 million, roughly 1% of that profit. Personally, I don’t think a 1% investment of their profit in brand building by giving those worst off, those who use services like Farepak their money back is a bad investment. Unfortunately they’ve left it a bit late now. Quite how the people in charge of HBOS managed to make such a complete hash of their image in this I don’t know. I mean I know banks are fairly heartless institutions, but I never thought they could be so bloody stupid…