Je Suis Eddie

at

00158335Eddie Hobbs

‘Other Eddie’ writes:

The very nasty piece about [Reboot Ireland’s] Eddie Hobbs in the Sunday Independent about his various business adventures has been removed from the Independent website. The article was astonishing given that Hobbs was only recently writing for the paper and is a leading part of the Lucinda Creighton’s new political movement (backed by the paper up to now). Incidentally The piece was written by Nick Webb, the son in law of Shane Ross, founder of the other new party and Lucinda’s rival….

Reboot! Fight!

The Consumer Champion Of Catastrophe (Nick Webb, Sunday Independent)

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41 thoughts on “Je Suis Eddie”

    2. Clampers Outside!

      That’s his contemplative look. When he does that his lips get sucked in and used to float his brain inside that massive planetoid sized cranium of his.
      When the contemplation stops his body relaxes and his lips come out to relax again.

      You’re welcome.

      PS – Can I do all the science bits from now on… OK?

    1. jackdaw

      Ah yes Marc “the best is yet to come” Coleman and who could forget Jim”Soft Landing” Power.

    3. Fairhill

      Maybe they think that people forget they are related and will just read the article in isolation

      Looking forward to this new politics, what would have been refreshing would be if he could have fought the urge to write anything

      Welcome to the wannabe new boss as dishonest as the old bosses

  11. Kill The Poor

    The consumer champion of catastrophe

    Eddie Hobbs, presented as the economic brain of Lucinda Creighton’s new party, has an interesting past, writes Nick Webb

    Eddie Hobbs has made his name as a consumer champion. But not all clients associated with his assorted business interests have done well. And some of his investment advice has been catastrophic.

    Hobbs started his career at Zurich Life in 1979 and stayed for 12 years. He climbed up the ranks to marketing manager and then jumped ship in 1991. Hobbs joined up with high-flying broker Tony Taylor’s wealth management group Taylor Asset Management later that year. He served as a director until 1996 when the business imploded after it emerged that Taylor had defrauded customers chasing losses caused by falling stockmarkets spooked by the Asian crisis.

    Hobbs was instrumental in uncovering the full extent of the fraud and reporting it to the authorities. A private detective tracked Taylor down after three years on the run and he was sentenced to five years in prison.

    A dossier later circulated alleging that Hobbs had helped facilitate tax evasion by Taylor’s clients. Hobbs vehemently denied these allegations. “Since his release, Taylor has been circulating these allegations and documentation against me,” Hobbs told the Sunday Independent in 2005. “I have never acted unlawfully and any statement or inference to the contrary is incorrect. No charges or prosecutions have ever been brought against me and neither do I expect any.”

    The Taylor allegations didn’t carry any weight and Hobbs would become spokesman for the Consumers Association. While Hobbs was instrumental in warning consumers about ropey financial products and rip-off prices, he failed to see the property crash coming and was a cheerleader for high-risk property plays.

    Hobbs was tenuously linked to a development that went sour on the island of Cape Verde off the coast of Senegal. He was asked by Cape Verde Developments to speak at some of its events in Ireland in 2006 and featured information about Cape Verde on his website. He is often remembered for mentioning it on Tubridy Tonight in 2006, drawing a distinction between it and Bulgaria when warning about investing in Bulgarian holiday homes.

    Cape Verde was marketed by its backers as the next big thing during the boom. Many Irish people invested in a property development on the island but the company behind it ran out of cash and lawsuits were filed. The High Court heard a case related to a development as recently as November.

    Corkman Hobbs helped raise money for a heavily leveraged commercial property fund just as the markets began to tank.

    In September 2007, Hobbs emerged as the front man for Brendan Investments, which was looking to invest in buildings in UK, Germany, Ireland and Portugal. Hobbs and his fellow executives were set to divvy up huge management fees from the firm, which planned to raise €50m from investors and borrow €110m.

    However it failed to hit its targets as the financial crisis erupted, raising just €12.6m from its public round of fundraising. Brendan Investments limped through the crisis having bought properties in Dusseldorf and Frankfurt. Recently it reported a €1.2m gain on the purchase of a distressed property in Detroit.

    Last week in an interview with the Sunday Independent, Hobbs recalled that during the boom he had also recommended that punters steam in to buy shares in Northern Rock. The British bank had the highest credit rating and it was, he thought, rock solid.

    Northern Rock’s share price fell from over stg£12 to 90p in less than a year before the British government moved to nationalise it. Shareholders saw their investment vaporised.

    Sunday Independent

  12. Bluebeard

    I don’t really see much substance in that article. He was a whistleblower and helped get a crook arrested. He gave people a sound if not spectacular investment opportunity which is providing a return. He was wrong on the Cape Verde islands but don’t see how he profited, and now he has the gumption to back a new political party which is more than his fellow commentators, except for Pain Ross and his nasty son in law. Why the hate?

    1. Medium Sized C

      Yeah but he is trying to do something in the public eye, and used to be on telly. Man the hate cannons.

  15. Ms Piggy

    I take the point about the journalist being Shane Ross’ son-in-law, but the article’s main points are all true, are they not? So the only surprising thing is that it’s been taken down, surely?

  16. Nikkeboentje

    A number of my clients were interested in investing in the Brendan Investments property syndicates, so I reviewed the Information Memorandum for them. The figures for rental growth that he was using were way above the 5 or 10 year averages (usually a good indicator). In addition he did the very sly “trick” of assuming that they would sell the properties at a lower yield than they bought it for (yield compression). Considering yields were at an all time low in 2007, this was a ridiculous assumption to make. All in all the returns that were forecasted in the the IM were never going to be achievable even if the ar$e hadn’t fallen out of the property market.
    Also, he was going after the small investor. From memory I think that you could invest in chunks of €5,000 or €10,000 (I can’t remember the exact figure but I remember it was low). I believe a lot of people borrowed the money (interest only) to invest and in some cases the interest was rolled up until for 5-7 years which was meant to be the life of the syndicate. This is a complete no-no. Anyone worth their salt would not allow clients to borrow money to invest in an already geared product.
    It seemed to me like he was out for a quick buck and didn’t care about the investors.

    1. scottser

      i’d say eddie just wants a td’s pension at this stage. even if he goes bankrupt he can still do an ivan yates.

  18. Eddie Reader

    As an avid follower of Eddie, it should be noted that it was reference to the amounts of money Eddie would allegedly be making from the management company set up along side the Brendan Invested vehicle that’s the issue for Eddie.

    So, as a matter of fact, the investment company was set up and regular plebs were invited to invest, where their money could go up or down based on property values.

    At the same time, a management company was set up be the same Eddie and colleagues. This company wasn’t open for investment by everyone, and it’s income would be much more stable a they were derived from managing properties bought by the investment company.

    This is all fact – I believe it is reference to the alleged piles of money that Eddie would be making from the management company that irks him and caused this article, and a few others in the past as well, to be taken down.

    Similarly, I believe that this is the reason the Irish Times article by Connor Pope on the same bould Eddie was edited without explanation (contravening their own online editorial policy) 8 hours after original publication.
    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/eddie-hobbs-a-salesman-who-s-best-at-selling-himself-1.2053464

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