Findlay Steele Associates Ltd

Who is Fergal George? .. Continued

But, the other FSA persisted and sent other e-mails so we finally replied saying that whilst we weren't prepared to give the domain name up for expenses only, we may consider transferring it for a reasonable figure. The other FSA replied offering a small figure to cover expenses and loss of goodwill. Given that the figure mentioned would not even have covered the cost of our time to transfer, we politely rejected it.

The other FSA then emailed back and brought up the issue of the elusive Fergal George again. They again stressed how concerned they were that a financial journalist might be using an e-mail address so similar to their own. We replied stating we had no knowledge of said gentleman and could they provide us with further information about the e-mail mentioned so that we could undertake our own investigations into the matter. They replied saying:

"It has come to our attention that Mr Fergal George has sent at least one e-mail on the subject of an article which appeared in "This is Money" on 23 October 2000 on the subject of mortgage endowments and the role of the FSA. In that message Mr. George used the e-mail address "Fergal.george@FSA.CO.UK". I quote that address, including the capitals, as it appeared on the page.

It is obviously of concern to us that Mr George, whether or not he is a financial journalist, is using an e-mail address which is so similar to our own and also writing about topics which so closely concern the FSA.

I should accordingly be grateful for any information you are able to provide concerning Mr George and his use of your e-mail address".

A copy of the article mentioned can be found here

We replied reiterating the fact that we had no knowledge of Mr. Fergal George and were indeed ourselves concerned about his fraudulent use of our e-mail address for such a purpose. We also said we would e-mail the Daily Mail (the newspaper that produces 'This Is Money' to ask if they had a copy of said e-mail. We also mentioned that while we did have some misaddressed e-mail (where people had typed fsa.co.uk instead of fsa.gov.uk) we had none for said Fergal George.

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