Thoughts on Finance, Current Affairs and General Consumer Ripoffs - Damn Lies and Statistics

London Capital & Finance was based in Tunbridge Wells and grew massively from 2015 with over 11,600 investors placing their money at rates up to 8% How does a small unknown company based in a sleepy Kent town grow from nothing to take £237 million from savers in 3 years? I think it essentially boils down to two words – name and service. The people behind London Capital & Finance (LCF) may have been running a Ponzi scam but they appear to have thought very carefully about how they planned it and made sure that they appealed to their target audience. In my view the LCF story was by no means accidental, it had a serious amount of planning to make sure that they obtained the maximum money for as long as possible. Once things have reached the courts I suspect it would make a gripping TV drama with the personalities involved. The Slick Sales Operation That Took £237 million from Savers LCF were very clever to choose a name that associated them with the City of Londo...

In news that will be welcomed by London Capital & Finance investors the FSCS have announced that claims by some investors may be accepted as they have reason to believe that advice may have been given. They have provided a questionnaire to gather more information about how many investors this may affect. https://www.fscs.org.uk/failed-firms/lcf/ This could mean that some LCF investors get their money back up to £85k which still means that others with investments above that could lose out as well as others that didn't receive advice. However the LCF website did show that FSCS cover did not apply and that the investment involved risk of losing their money which some investors seem to have missed. The advice element may refer to sales allegedly made by John Russell Murphy who a number of LCF investors have claimed met them to conclude sales of LCF bonds.

There have been reports that some investors in London Capital and Finance are unhappy with the use of the term "mini-bond" to describe what they purchased from LCF. However the reports just highlight further the confusion from many investors over what they actually bought. Many people seem to have little understanding of the structure of an ISA and that it is only a tax wrapper rather than a product in its own right. It's partly understandable as most people have no knowledge of ISAs other than cash ISAs. The London Capital and Finance website also didn't help matters by listing ISAs and bonds separately - in reality they are invested in exactly the same product but the ISA just has a tax wrapper around it meaning no tax is due on any income from it. LCF Mini Bonds or ISA? Investor Confusion over FCA Terminology The screenshot above shows the LCF website that doesn't make clear that the ISA and bond contain exactly the same mini bonds and that the only ...

One of the latest ISAs being advertised by Review My ISA is called Barbican ISA claiming to offer a fixed rate of 7%. However if you look at the small print you will find out some worrying details. Barbican ISA Bond Review - Is it a Scam? Despite the claim that the ISA is regulated and authorised by the FCA it is important to note that this product is not protected by the FSCS so you could lose all your money if the investment goes wrong as investors in London Capital and Finance have found to their cost. This ISA is promoted on Facebook by "Mark's Money Matters" who seem to have a track record for promoting misleading investments that are listed as savings. The key point is that despite all the references to SAVINGS this is not a savings product but an investment where you can lose all your money and the value is not guaranteed. Even the interest rate is not fixed as they could go bust before the end of the term as LCF did. We are not suggesting that Barbican I...

After all the posts about London Capital and Finance this is finally another blog post more in line with my original intention for this blog. The fascinating news today is that Boris Johnson has been found to have a case to answer and will be facing court for charges of "Misconduct in Public Office" over his claims during the EU referendum that the UK pays the EU £350 million every week. Depending on the signage this claim was either that we could spend some on the NHS or as the sign below shows, spend ALL of it on the NHS. Boris Johnson & Brexit NHS £350m Court Case Boris Johnson had several opportunities to correct the numbers and was warned by the Office for National Statistics that the number could not be justified but he carried on using the £350 million figure. Rather than apologising he has repeatedly continued to state the number refusing to accept that it is incorrect and not grounded in reality. It will be interesting to see how the court case develop...

Jim Armitage of the Evening Standard has reported that various people linked to London Capital & Finance, some of whom were arrested by the Serious Fraud Office in March 2019 have had property & assets frozen so that they are unable to sell or transfer them. The names associated with these freezing orders will be familiar to anyone who has been following the LCF saga and include the CEO of LCF Andy Thompson as well as Simon Hume Kendall CEO of the largest borrower from LCF. LCF Properties Assets Frozen Fraud Office https://www.standard.co.uk/business/serious-fraud-office-freezes-12-million-of-property-in-lcf-probe-a4143896.html

The London Capital & Finance saga took another bizarre twist this week with the trustees called Global Security Trustees (GST) that are supposed to be protecting the bondholders interests (as they hold a debenture in favour of bondholders) voting against the proposals to form a creditors committee. You may remember from previous blog posts that there were some strange goings on with GST. The trustees had been sold to a company based in Malta but are now run from the UK again. The directors of GST have yet again changed and are now Jeremy Friedlander, Stephen Gill and Mark Pollard. Jeremy Friedlander is also one of the shareholders of GST. LCF Trustees Acting Against Bondholders In another twist GST claimed to be representing holders £57 million of bonds. It's not clear how they were able to do that when they have no assets themselves other than £100 but I suspect they were able to engineer proxy votes for chunks of investors. It could even be that somewhere in the LCF ...