Following last week's FCA shutdown of new investment into Buy2LetCars, Smith & Williamson has unceremoniously dumped CEO and owner Reginald Larry-Cole from an "Entrepreneur's Hall Of Fame".
Google's cache shows that on Friday 19th, the day of the FCA's intervention, the hall of fame entry was still up. But at some point after this it was quietly removed.
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Redhat Group claims to provide an "FCA Approved Managed FX Account" which "rewards our clients with above average returns by utilising our sophisticated Redhat Trading Platform."
Past performance data on Redhat's website claims that their investment delivered returns of 146% in 2019 and 153% in 2020.
There is also a live webpage on Redhat's website offering a "Loan Note" paying 24% over 24 months, although it is orphaned (i.e. not accessible from the main website and only reachable with a Google search).
Continue reading for a review of Redhat Group's forex investment.
Figures published by Money Marketing last week indicate that so far the FSCS has paid out £56.3 million to 2,878 investors in FCA-authorised Ponzi scheme London Capital and Finance.
At around £19,500 per investor, that's pretty typical of the average total investment.
Apart from £2.7m for investors who transferred a stocks and shares ISA, the vast majority of that was paid for LCF giving misleading "advice". Despite not being a financial advice firm, not being authorised to give financial advice, and employing no financial advisers, Financial Services Compensation Scheme levy payers, i.e. the general public, have been put on the hook on the basis of "I'd advise my own mother to invest in this" school of salesmanship.
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After over 8 years in operation, the Buy2letcars investment scheme has been closed to new investment by the FCA.
A "first supervisory notice" placed on Buy2letcars' parent company, Raedex Consortium, prohibits the company from carrying out any regulated activities other than collecting payments on vehicle leases that were already in place.
Buy2letcars solicits investment via social media and radio ads from the public, whose money is used to purchase a car to be leased out to a borrower. As the investment is unregulated, the FCA does not technically have the power to stop Buy2letcars taking in investment. However, FCA does have the power to stop Buy2letcars arranging new vehicle leases, and if Buy2letcars can't arrange new vehicle leases, it can't take in new investment as it can't do anything with it.
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Bentley Global has filed accounts for August 2019, 5 months overdue (even after allowing for the Covid 3 month extension). In doing so it has earned a reprieve from a strike-off action issued by Companies House in November and suspended the following month.
Bentley Global's August 2018 accounts showed that it had raised £4.8 million in its bonds paying 12 - 20% per year. That figure swelled to £8.6 million by August 2019.
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Independent Portfolio Managers facilitated two minibond investments which collapsed back in 2015 and 2016, Secured Energy Bonds and Providence Bonds, losing in the region of £8m each.
IPM was finished off by the zombie corpse of its former customer, after the administrators of Secured Energy Bonds put it into administration seeking £5.6 million.
The liquidators have now issued their second progress report.
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An unedifying dispute broke out this week as Andrew Bailey testified to a Treasury Select Committee about the collapse of London Capital and Finance.
In one of the more depressing sections of Dame Gloster's report into the FCA's mishandling of the FCA-authorised Ponzi scheme (in a crowded field), Dame Gloster highlighted how, instead of using the investigation as an opportunity to learn from its mistakes, the FCA instead tried to shirk responsibility, claiming that holding individuals responsible for their failings might deter people from applying to be senior bureaucrats, and questioning whether, in a very real sense, there was any such thing as responsibility at all.
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The administrators of the collapsed forex Ponzi Hudspiths Limited have released their first full report after being appointed.
Contrary to sex shop owner and Hudspiths director's Karl Lubienicki, who claimed to the Daily Mail "There’s no money missing. You can’t hide £50million" and that only £7.5 million was outstanding to Hudpsiths creditors, the administrators report that £85 million of claims have been received from 153 creditors. In the original Statement of Affairs, there were only 109 creditors with debts totalling £41 million.
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The administrators of Harewood Associates have released their latest report.
£2.8 million owed by another Kiely-owned company, Lansdown Investment Management, has now been fully repaid.
The administrators are however still expecting only 7p in the pound to be paid to Harewood Associate's £32 million worth of unsecured creditors.
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Pardus Fixed Income Bond Company plc has delayed filing its first set of accounts for a second time in succession.
Pardus' last accounts were filed as a dormant company. As a PLC, its first accounts as an active company should have been filed nine months after the accounting date of January 2020, under the time limits specified in the Companies Act. That nine months already includes a three month extension granted by the Government due to Covid.
Instead, Pardus used a trick whereby it reduced its accounting period by a single day, which under the letter of the law grants it an extra three months to file its accounts. It has now repeated the trick, giving it another three months until the end of April 2021 (15 months after the last accounting period ended).
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