DEAL! NOEL ‘WINS £5m’ AFTER HIS BITTER ROW WITH LLOYDS TV star Noel plots fresh Lloyds fight
NOEL Edmonds is plotting a fresh legal assault on Lloyds if a police investigation leads to more bankers being arrested.
sources close to the TV star insisted that a compensation deal he struck with the bank does not mean his action against it is over.
Edmonds (pictured) was paid an estimated £5m by Lloyds after bankers destroyed his firm.
As part of the agreement he has taken down a website criticising its boss Antonio Horta-Osorio.
But there is a new row over whether this draws a line under the matter with the lender’s commercial banking chief David Oldfield insisting that the sides have settled.
Oldfield said yesterday: ‘We’re pleased to have settled with Noel. We’ve apologised again for the distress caused to him.’
But Edmonds – on holiday in France – has told friends that he plans to relaunch his campaign after the summer break.
Other sources said that control of his website will be transferred to other campaigners who want to continue fighting.
Before he took it down, the site was offering a £10,000 reward for information about Horta-Osorio’s private life and publishing a stream of attacks on the lender.
The site will be reactivated under new management in coming weeks, insiders claimed.
It is thought Edmonds himself will only be able to restart his legal challenge if an investigation by Thames Valley Police triggers more criminal action against bank staff.
The Deal or No Deal star claimed that his business Unique Group was destroyed after it came into contact with crooked banker Mark Dobson, who worked for HBOs before it was bought by Lloyds in 2008.
Dobson was jailed for his part in a separate fraud run out of the HBOs Reading branch, in which he and other crooked financiers deliberately wrecked companies and spent the profits on prostitutes, lavish holidays and luxury goods.
Edmonds said that Unique was a healthy business which only failed because it came into Dobson’s clutches. To begin with he sought as much as £100m in damages, and has won backing from lawsuit funding firm Therium to sue Lloyds.
Lloyds initially tried to buy Edmonds off with £3.6m following mediation talks in 2017, but he dismissed this as too little.
It is thought Edmonds has been paid substantially more than this as part of the agreement, and may have netted around £5m based on previous settlements with victims.
Neither side would confirm the amount.
It came as Lloyds posted profits of £2.9bn in the first half of 2019, down 7pc on a year earlier.
The results were hit by a surge in compensation demands from victims of PPI mis-selling, which forced the bank to set aside another £550m.
Lloyds hiked its interim dividend by 4.7pc to 1.12p per share in a boost for its 2.4m small shareholders. The average ordinary investor will get a £67 payment.