The court was told that HBOS might not have been able to open its doors on Monday 29 September 2008 without the emergency loans that the shareholders bringing the claim argue were not properly disclosed at the time they voted through the takeover in November 2008. “We are saying shareholders were mugged in this acquisition and should never have been kept in the dark,” said Hill. Lloyds announced the takeover of HBOS on 18 September 2008. “The government was encouraging Lloyds to buy HBOS and to relieve the government of the burden of nationalising HBOS,” said Hill, adding that this left Lloyds shareholders with “catastrophic losses”. In correspondence Hill read out in court, a Lloyds banker is said to have described the HBOS deal as “transferring the monkey from theirs to our shoulders”.

Source: The Guardian October 18, 2017 13:02 UTC