Businessman’s desperate bank protest
BY MICHAEL PRINGLE michael.pringle@reachplc.com A BUSINESSMAN will go on hunger strike and live on the streets in a desperate effort to keep his home.
Bankrupt John Guidi, 63, will begin a protest against Clydesdale Bank by pitching a tent in Glasgow near the head office of CYBG, the firm’s owner.
With financial backing from Clydesdale, John had built a portfolio of 150 residential properties in and around the city.
Close to tears, the entrepreneur, from Bothwell in Lanarkshire, said: “For the past six years, I’ve been pursued, persecuted, bullied and brutalised by the bank and the companies it passed me on to.”
John’s problems began when a Westminster Treasury Committee Report found the type of loans Clydesdale Bank had given to him had been mis-sold.
The loans were then transferred to National Australia Bank and sold off to New York-based Cerebrus in 2014.
In 2015, John’s businesses were put into receivership by Promontoria Chestnut, a debt collecting agency linked to Cerebrus.
The properties were sold off for £8million – half their worth.
John said: “The bank told me Cerebrus was ‘a new lender’. It doesn’t even have a licence to provide financial services.”
He is being aided by CYBG Mediation Support Group, which represents 200 affected businesses.
A spokesman for CYBG, said: “While Mr Guidi’s case is a complex one, we are confident we have investigated it thoroughly.”