Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has denied it submitted to a parliamentary inquiry incomplete information about its involvement with failed advice group Storm Financial.
Storm Financial founder Julie Cassimatis has claimed CBA inaccurately stated in its submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee Inquiry into Financial Products and Services in Australia that “Storm insisted that we were not to call its clients”.
“They are trying to make out that we said ‘don’t contact the Storm clients’ and therefore they didn’t give the margin loans to the Storm clients,” Cassimatis told InvestorDaily.
“The only time that was ever said was on an email on 1 December – this is two weeks after they have sold everybody out and all the damage is done – and they’ve said ‘we are going to start ringing the clients and insisting they pay this negative equity or we’re going to bankrupt people’.”
She said the email requested CBA to hold off from contacting Storm clients until after a meeting had been held between her and co-founder Emmanuel Cassimatis and now retired CBA executive general manager of private client services Edward Tait.
“It was just don’t talk to them for the next how many hours, so they’ve twisted it and left out all those pertinent details and let the public and then let the inquiry members think that we gave them a direction not to talk to clients, and therefore they didn’t make margin calls and therefore that’s where all the trouble happened,” she said.
In the 1 December email, which InvestorDaily obtained a copy of, Cassimatis wrote to Colonial Geared Investments head of investment lending – distribution John Clothier asking for extra time.
“John, Emmanuel and I are seeing Ed Tait this afternoon – please do not start phoning clients until our meeting is finalised and we all know where we stand. Thanks Julie,” the email said.
A CBA spokesperson said the bank did not submit incomplete information.
“No. It was clear to the Commonwealth Bank that we were not to contact Storm clients, which we have reiterated on numerous occasions,” the spokesperson said.
