A few days before it fell overdue with its annual accounts, Blackmore Bonds plc has used a loophole in the Companies Act to delay filing.
Blackmore Bond plc’s accounts for the year ending December 2018 would normally have become overdue on 30 June 2019. On 27 June Blackmore shortened its accounting period by a single day, giving it another three months before it legally becomes overdue.
Scrutiny has fallen on Blackmore Bond plc as a result of the collapse of London Capital and Finance. Like LCF, Blackmore used Surge Financial as a marketing agent. Immediately after LCF collapsed, Blackmore bonds were promoted in LCF’s place on Surge’s top-isa-rates and best-interest-rates websites. Blackmore recently disclosed that it pays up to 20% of investors’ money as commission. Unlike LCF, Blackmore continues to trade and make all due payments in full, to the best of our knowledge.
Blackmore Bond plc’s last accounts for December 2017 (now a year and a half old) disclosed that it had raised £25 million from investors. At that time it had net assets of minus £7.6 million.
The accounts said that the company “fully intends to reach the £100m fund raising mark”.
Blackmore closed to new business in April 2019. In May 2019 it opened an office in Dubai to promote its bonds abroad. At time of writing its website still says that it is not currently taking new investment.
Why it is unable to file its annual accounts in a timely fashion is not known.
Update
Blackmore has told IFA trade paper Money Marketing that the accounts will be filed in September 2019, following a change of auditor. Blackmore’s last accounts were audited by Grant Thornton.
Blackmore states that it expects revenue of £20 million this year. As to whether it is generating sufficient profit to pay all investors back, we will have to wait and see.
While it was still open to new business, Blackmore paid commissions of 20% to Surge Financial (disclosed via its website and its last accounts). In slightly simplified terms, Blackmore needs to generate returns of 15.6% per year after costs and overheads to repay investors who invested in 3 year loan notes paying 7.9% per year, due to the 20% commission that comes out at the start.