Michael Knighton

Noel Edmonds, the host of Deal or No Deal, once asked Lloyds for £300 million over bankers he says sank his company. His own lawyers later offered to drop it for £10 million, and the bank said no. In 2019 he settled for a sum the papers put at about £5 million. In the video below, from 2017, he tells Channel 4 News, "Money is their God, greed is their faith." Being famous changes nothing, he says. "I'm still the same as everybody else when it comes to being the victim of a crime." The crime was real. Between 2003 and 2007 an HBOS banker in Reading steered struggling business customers to a consultant, David Mills, whose firm drained their loans through fees. About £245 million went through the scheme, some of it on luxury holidays and Rolex watches. In 2017 six people were jailed, Mills for 15 years. Edmonds' company, Unique, was not part of that case. It banked with HBOS in London and went into receivership in 2007. But one of the 6 jailed men, Mark Dobson, had been his bank manager too. "I was Dobsoned," he says. Lloyds, which took over HBOS in 2009, said it strongly disputed that the bank was why his business went under. He went after 3 times the £100 million Lloyds had set aside for all the victims and stood up at the bank's annual meeting in 2018. In mediation his side offered to settle for £10 million, Lloyds refused, and his team walked out. In July 2019 the bank apologised for his distress, and neither side gave the figure. I think Edmonds negotiated like a contestant, not like a banker. He opened at £300 million, said out loud that £10 million would end it, and finished near £5 million. If you ever settle with a bank, the figure you say you would accept becomes the most it will pay. At the end of the clip the reporter puts Lloyds' view to him, that he "just mishandled the running" of his own business. So who is right, the man who says HBOS bankers sank his company, or the bank that says he sank it himself? I post one story like this every day: a famous name, the money they made, and who ended up with it.