- Joined
- Apr 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,773
Ooopphs! Like the accountants at Norton, I seem to have missed out a zero on that £80, 000!
Re; "I never met SG or SS but my gut feeling is that I do not believe that there was ever any intention to commit fraud, I believe there was good intention their to build the brand with the newer models and make everything right"It would have been interesting to have been a fly in the wall at the Metro Bank meetings to see why they decided to pull the plug when they did. Maybe they were tipped off at some of the practices reported of stripping parts from owners bikes to get other bikes looking finished in order to get balance payments or maybe they just didn't believe in the evolving business plan.
I never met SG or SS but my gut feeling is that I do not believe that there was ever any intention to commit fraud, I believe there was good intention their to build the brand with the newer models and make everything right. The initial 961's and even the later 961's had their issues but I have always been dealt very fairly and all warantee issues were sorted, right up until the day of admin.
Who knows, with a bit of extra time, could they have got the Atlas moving, got money in from China, India and Japan and made the company a success, thus making the loans repayable and the pension money a good investment. Some obvious mistakes in hindsight was the expediture on the big country estate and TT racing, or was that essential to build the brand up again. The six Astons were definately excess to the extreme. The stripping down of bikes to get money was the last resort to try and keep the whole thing afloat, I wonder if we would have ever known about that (as bad as it was) if some more time was given.
More info will come out in due course I am sure, current owners are concerned about thier own investments in thier bikes but all of us are I am sure feel deeply for pension holders involved in the demise as well as folks that put deposits down and made full payments towards bikes they may never get.
Many are very angry right now with what has transpired, but my gut feeling as I say was that they were not doing this as a con, but just got it wrong and made very foolish decisions that will come back to haunt them in the coming months.
One wonders where in your world when does SG tip himself over the line from a good business plan to downright fraud?
Lets look at the evidence, over 30 complaints to the pensions Ombudsman for not returning their money, £800K worth of expensive cars for SG to amuse himself with and millions of pounds of Government money that went down the ever expanding piss hole, and still he couldn't pay the £300K to the taxman-which brought about his downfall. I bet he was laughing until the last bit when his " Walter Mitty" world collapsed around him.
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