Secret Agreements

The CBA and the Macquarie bank will have a hard time justifying their secret agreements with Storm Financial that became the catalyst for churning money out of clients by over-leveraging. Indeed such agreements are at the heart of the claim that these banks in conjunction with Storm were operating managed investment schemes that were not registered. 

The implications of such agreements where the bank has separately contracted with Storm's clients are enormous. For one they markedly affected the ratios agreed between the banks and Storm's clients, and they also delayed the notification process when margin calls were made. In fact, for the most part, the banks' Storm customers were not notified at all. The banks simply left it to Storm to perform this which, in itself, is a violation of their obligations to their customers under the conditions of their margin loan contracts.

The courts do not look kindly on any actions taken outside the conditions or spirit of any contract. The claims by the banks that they had our implied permission to communicate with us through Storm because that firm was acting as our agent won't wash. In our agreements with the banks, we never agreed to this at any time. The banks' assumptions in this regard are just not good enough!

Of course, if everything was that easy, we wouldn't need court rooms or lawyers . Let's hope the law isn't an ass and that justice will prevail. It's about time the victims of these banks and Storm got a fair deal. And, by a fair deal, I don't mean some half-baked resolution scheme that only serve's to kick justice up the backside!