News

Many thousands of businesses have been struggling over recent years to deal with the implications of long term fixed rate loans: ongoing interest costs significantly above current base rate, and unexpectedly high break cost charges for repaying loans early or refinancing. Businesses often feel that they were not fairly informed about the implication of long term fixes when entering into the loan and would either have not fixed their rate, would have chosen a different […]

An important decision has been released by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) relating to a swap entered into by Messrs Green & Rowley after the 2005 swap which has been the subject of a long running litigated battle with RBS, culminating in the Court of Appeal’s decision in October 2013. Some 3 years after entering into their initial swap with RBS, Messrs Green & Rowley entered into a further swap, this time in partnership with […]

For over three years, I have represented and advised over 60 small businesses and private individuals with claims or complaints in relation to interest rate hedging products. Each situation has been unique, and has been treated as such. However, the common theme has been that people have entered into contracts where they did not properly understand the features and risks of such contracts. Due to the magnitude of interest rate hedge mis-selling, over recent months […]

The FSA Report on Interest Rate Hedging disputes of 29th June 2012 was welcome in that it found serious failings in the sale of these products, corroborating the claims made by large numbers of businesses, which to date, have almost all been vigorously defended by the banks. I report below on the current position in the immediate aftermath of this report, how the various banks and the FOS have reacted to date and what I […]