| The leading investment bank has decided to join Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan by setting up its own captive offshore services facility in India. Lehman has chosen Mumbai as the location for the new center, and has already begun filling the top management positions for the operation. In the past, Lehman had outsourced some of its IT services to companies such as Wipro and TCS. Although it withdrew part of that work from Wipro earlier this year, Lehman’s decision to set up its own captive center reaffirms its faith in India.
Anyway back to lloyds tsb and a lovely article I found in the Guardian some time back. Reading it even now makes me chuckle, and shows there is some justice in this unfair world... anyway the link is:
http://money.guardian.co.uk/precipicebonds/story/0,14761,1261268,00.html
(just copy and paste in your firefox search engine.)
Record fine for Lloyds TSB
FSA lands bank with £100m bill for mis-selling precipice bonds
Jill Treanor
Friday September 26, 2003
The Guardian
Lloyds TSB was yesterday handed the largest ever fine -£1.9m - levied by the financial services authority for misselling financial products and was left with a bill of at least £98m to compensate customers who were incorrectly sold high risk bonds. It is the second high profile regulatory action against the bank in less than a year. Lloyds TSB received a £1m fine for the way its Abbey Life subsidiary sold endowment policies, which required compensation of as much as £160m. The FSA said the latest fine would have been higher if the bank had not cooperated with the inquiry. Even so, the regulator found the bank had failed to act with "due skill, care and diligence" in selling "precipice bonds" through its branch network. The regulator indicated that the action against Lloyds TSB was part of a wider investigation into precipice bonds, which were sold by other financial firms and through intermediaries. With new chief executive John Tiner at the helm, the FSA has made clear that it will take a stance to protect consumers. City sources regarded the size of the fine as evidence of this. It is the second only to the £4m paid by investment bank CSFB for lax management controls. The £1.9m fine against Lloyds TSB relates to 22,500 policies of the Scottish Widows extra income and growth plan sold through Lloyds TSB branches between October 2000 and July 2001. The products offered a high rate of income at 10.25% but did not protect the capital which was put at risk by investments in only 30 or so stocks such as Marconi and Colt Telecom. In November 2000 the Guardian's Jobs & Money section warned investors to avoid the products. The FSA did not criticise Lloyds TSB or its investment subsidiary, Scottish Widows, for the structure of the product. Instead, the regulator was concerned about the way it was sold. The regulator accused the bank of not having "rigorous procedures and controls" for selling the product, which meant it went to people who put too much of their money into it or to who were not used to investing in equities. Lloyds put too much pressure on staff to achieve sales targets rather than considering whether the product was appropriate for investors. The regulator noted that the mis-selling had taken place even though the bank had identified the potential risk of that occurring even before the product went on sale. Lloyds TSB was writing yesterday to the 22,500 policyholders covered by the FSA action. Some of them have already received compensation from Lloyds but can now expect to be given a top-up because of the terms of the settlement with the FSA. Lloyds had been settling with customers at a 3% rate of interest on the total amount of their investment while the FSA is requiring payment of 4.6% to 5.2%. Lloyds TSB, which took a £300m provision to cover potential redress for customers in the first half of the year, said it was sorry. The bank has already set aside at least £800m to cover pensions mis-sellling in the last five years. The bank's new chief executive, Eric Daniels, is changing the way it pays its staff, by putting less emphasis on sales of products, and is boosting its training programme. The financial ombudsman service has received 3,000 complaints about precipice bonds sold by the financial services industry and expects another 1,000. Lloyds has set up a customer line, 0800 828 4761, to deal with complaints. The toll September 2003 £1.9m fine and ordered to pay at least £98m in compensation for mis-selling high income bonds December 2002 £1m fine and up to £160m in compensation for the mis-selling of endowment policies by the Abbey Life subsidiary November 2000 £100,000 fine for not changing numbers on a safe often enough January 1999 £1.5m fine and compensation for the handling of unit trusts September 1998 £613,000 fine and compensation for the administration of unit trusts
Ok and a cool review of their loans:
| Author's product rating |  | Advantages You get a loan
Disadvantages high interest rates, bad customer service, ignore complaints
Summary:
Full review | Last year I got 2 loans from Lloyds TSB’s Loans Direct one for £1000 and one for £3000. How I wish I had never bothered in the first place. The company has no sense of customer service as they ignore complaints or take too long to sort them out. I applied for these loans last year via their web site. The website suggests that it should only take 48hours for a decision of conformation. I sat and waited for 2 weeks and still no conformation on whether or not my first loan had been accepted. I decided to telephone the company and they confirmed that I had been successful with my application. No apologies or real explanations to why it had taken so long for them to make a decision. All I was told was these things happen. The same thing happened with my second loan, which after 3 weeks was also accepted. This didn’t please me at all but I didn’t complain because I had the loans that I needed at the time and I suppose I was grateful that they had accepted my application.
On my third attempt, this year, to apply for a personal loan I was refused on acceptable basis but it took them 6 weeks to tell me. The problem was that I had moved from one address to another since my last loans and their computers were not up dated. I also bank with Lloyds TSB and it was supposed to be their job to notify Loans Direct of my address change but they didn’t on several occasions. I was left to contact various departments within the Lloyds TSB group to make sure they were faxing the information to departments properly. This should have been their job but it ended up being mine. Anyway the loan was refused and that was that.
Last month I found my self to be in some financial difficulties which I am still in. As a result of this I found that I wouldn’t be able to pay for my loans for that month so I contacted the Loans Direct customer service department to discus my account. I asked if I could have a month off paying and it was agreed. I was prom ised a phone call from a different department to set up the arrangement. I never got that phone call so I again telephoned the loans direct company and asked what was going on. They told me that I had been misinformed and that somebody would contact me but it would take a few more days. So I waited and waited and nothing. The next thing I knew I had a letter from my bank explaining that Loans Direct had tried to take the direct debits from my bank account but they had to be returned due to insufficient funds ion my account. The bank charged me £60 for returning the direct debits. This angered me because it had been agreed that they wouldn’t take the money from my account.
The next day I received a letter from loans direct explaining that they had tried and failed to take the direct debits from my account and that they would try again in 7 days. I wrote them a letter to explain that they had said I could have a month off paying but had ignored this request resulting in £60 charges from my bank. I also again forbid them to try and take this money from my account. I did get a response to this letter but I was told only that they were dealing with it. The next thing I knew I had another letter from my bank charging me again for another direct debit but for another company. This confused me because I had put money into my account to cover this. A look at my statement via internet banking confirmed that Loans direct had actual ignored my second request and successfully taking the money from my account. This again angered me because I now have been charged £90 altogether, so far, for their ignorance.
I am still pending an explanation and a refund for these charges from Loans Direct but still nothing. I have told them that I want them to pay for the bank charges and refund the money, which they took from my account when it was agreed that they wouldn’t do it. The way I see it is that if you owe them money they are on your back all the time but if they owe you money you don’t hear from them at all. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to use this company at all. There lack of customer service is unbelievable and their whole attitude towards the customer is disgusting. Some of the staff were very abrupt and rude on the phone. The service I have received has been bad from the start and I would definitely never use them again.
| Recommend no
Still raises a smile even now that article.
| 
(MOSNEWS)—Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.
In addition to urging others to wage jihad against the U.S., al-Timimi was reportedly joyous and celebrated various tragic events experienced by the U.S., including the February 1, 2003 crash of the space Shuttle Columbia. 
