The farce of a loan from UK Government
A “solution” put forward many times since the collapse has been for the IOM to borrow the required funds from UK Government to enable the IOM to pay back to depositors what is rightly theirs.
This was recently raised again in the “questions to Mike Simpson “ on 6th April (point 6 refers of the excellent posting by Frog of 25/04) The “answer” given is that Mike Simpson understands that there will be no such loan.
BUT....
The UK Government has a deficit, i.e. borrowings of something approaching £100 billion already (and yet they saw it wise to refund 100% of individual depositors’ monies).
In stark contrast the IOM Government has a surplus, i.e. money sitting in the bank. They don’t need a loan from the UK or any one else, they already have money.
They call it their “reserve fund”, - it’s not required for any of their planned expenditure, it just sits there earning interest.
The amount? - Well as at 31st March this year it stood at £248.5M!!!!
(see page 37 of the IOM treasury report - http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/treasury/budget/2009/budget0910.pdf)
So a loan from UK Government would be a nonsense – The IOM Government has virtually £250M surplus to requirements already.
They just need the will to spend it.
Unbelievable IOM Neveragain
I have not examined the IOMG's accounts that you have posted but I am sure you have interpreted them correctly. I am amazed that no other person has come up with this information a lot sooner considering its now 6.5 months after the banks collapse.
Surely the IOMG have to consider spending some of this surplus to ease the pressure on this fiasco, particularly as their own FSC are partly to blame for the position we find ourselves in. If IOMG are not prepared to bight the bullet and cough up actual funds (not just a loan) they take the risk of all the bad publicity that is bound to be thrown at them by DAG once the likely actual shortfall in recovery of the banks total assets is reported. This would no doubt have a serious adverse effect on the IOM's future financial services industry. I would like to think that they would do the right thing at the end of the day but I would not bet on it.
Claim against FSC/IOM government
Have DAG's lawyers expressed a view on whether any claim is tenable/ likely to recover substantial sums from IOMG - or is there no liability?