Guy Hands moves to Guernsey to join tax exiles | Business | guardian.co.uk .
Given the mess he's made of what he's invested here it's hard to call this a loss.
Ask anyone associated with EMI.
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Hands (and his equally talentless wife) are prime examples of the tendency of certain brown matter to defy the laws of physics.
In the 90’s I was working in the wine trade for Oddbins when he persuaded his bosses at Nomura to purchase our nominal competitors the Threshers group. Any fool (and wine retail was and still is full of them) could have seen that this was just financial chicanery pure and simple, for there simply wasn’t the operating profit to justify the price they paid. However as a means of obtaining a sercuritised asset, in this future revenue that could be banked and then transformed into geared lending it was perfect.
I sincerely hope that when the blinkers finally fall away under the crushing weight of recession and the busted housing (so called) market, the British people begin to realise just how they have been stuffed by sharks like Hands and his ilk and will then seek more tangible than a couple of weasel worded apologies, I’m thinking trials and long prison terms. Unlike the happy heads in the official media, I suspect that Hands knows this and that’s why he’s made a bolt for it before its to late.
EMI is one of those evil corporations which was dumb enough to use Digital Rights Management on its media.
Now they are selling a brand new product, DRM-free music! Something we already had for decades previously, what am I meant to be excited about here?
I can imagine he does really need to save on his tax bill. A company like EMI can’t possibly survive much longer.
Ah yes , now the governments dared to raise the tax rate for earnings to 50% for earnings over £150k/annum, we get the old story about talent being priced out of Britain etc, etc, etc. This implies that without the City and its “genius financiers” like Hands, the UK is an economic basket case. Obviously, all the rest of us are talentless, lazy and useless without the leadership shown by these people!
But of course, it is precisely the City establishment and over mighty financiers that have caused a disaster everybody else is now going to spend years paying for. Really, there are only two possible responses to this.
1)Even if people like this really do generate wealth for UK plc, how does that justify them using tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of tax? In which case of course, the correct responser is not to give in to this special pleading, but close the damn tax havens.
2) However, I suspect that Martin is correct, and that as a country we’re better off without this egotistical buffoon and his fellow travellers. Goodbye and good riddance, Hands.
Did you see this in today’s Guardian just before the Hands story?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/10/tax-avoidance-coutts
How does that work and is it common?
Thanks
Arnald
The answer was it was artificial and did not work
I’m sure people are still trying variants on it
Richard