Letters / Questions about Quayle Munro
Regarding “Viking adviser hit by profit warnings” (SN 8/7/12) please allow me to add a few comments.
I have run a small business for over 30 years and were I to seek financial advice regarding investing my, let alone somebody else’s, money, I most certainly wouldn’t take advice from Quayle Munro.
Their sudden and suspiciously large discrepancy between turnover and profit tells me there was a bit of “upholstery” involved the previous year, such as selling off assets to keep the share price afloat.
Given QM’s poor 2012 forecast, I guess some potential clients have drawn the same conclusion and are seeking advice elsewhere.
Not Shetland Charitable Trust though, which has already earmarked a handsome sum of our money for more of QM’s independent advice.
Regarding ethics and moral values, I wouldn’t touch Mr Cormie, QM’s financial advisor, with a barge pole, since reading his 2011 interviews with The Herald and BQ, which contain such gems as: “Hedge funds have made a spectacular amount of money and are now picking on the poorer countries, but that’s their job.”
As for checks and balances in the financial sector: “I think governments and people should stop meddling”.
And finally about his contacts with Enron: “I met a lot of people who are now in jail — and probably quite rightly so. They used to hold some good parties though.”
There is no “probably” about the Enron sentencing and it is pretty certain the “good parties” were thrown by those who’d been lining their pockets with shareholders’ money and employees’ pension fund contributions for years.
Mr Cormie’s crowing about his questionable past associations in public puts his intelligence in question, as far as I’m concerned. But that’s the person SCT officials have chosen to do business with.
It seems they’ve not only swallowed hook, line and sinker the financial advice from a company who can’t keep its own financial house in order, but passed this on to the trustees, some of whom have also taken the bait (Messrs Ratter and Wills deserve a special mention here) which raises some serious questions.
What, if any, process of scrutiny is applied when selecting consultants?
Were SCT officials aware of QM’s recent performance and Mr Cormie’s questionable ethics? If not, why not?
If so, then why was this not passed on to trustees at the VE briefing meetings in order to allow them to arrive at a fully informed decision at that “crucial meeting?
The information in question was in the public domain prior to the SCT meeting of 28 June:
http://www.bq-magazine.co.uk/interview/scot/s5-int1/
Rosa Steppanova
The Lea
Tresta
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