After being denied compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (other than a tiny handful of exceptions,) London Capital & Finance investors have raised money via crowdfunding to launch a judicial review.
As at 23rd April the campaign had already raised £7,833, exceeding its initial £7,000 target. Technically the campaign is to fund the judicial challenges of only the four LCF investors on the creditors’ committee, but if their challenges succeed, this will surely set a precedent for the rest.
London Capital & Finance investors have been both emboldened and enraged by the FSCS’ early indications that it will bail out investors in fellow collapsed minibond scheme Basset & Gold, which went into administration on 1 April.
In the case of LCF, the FSCS has only bailed out a handful of richer and more financially experienced investors – those who transferred stocks and shares ISAs to LCF. To everyone else it has indicated it is unlikely compensation will be payable.
We have concluded there will be some customers who were given misleading advice by LCF and so have valid claims for compensation. However, we expect that many customers will not be eligible for compensation on this basis.- Jan 2020 FSCS announcement
By contrast, Basset and Gold investors have been given a far more positive indication by the FCA that compensation will be payable on the grounds of misselling.
The FSCS has determined that many investors have a good prospect of claiming compensation.– Apr 2020 FCA announcement
The distinction between LCF and Basset & Gold is that LCF had one FCA-regulated company, which both issued the investment and the investment literature, while Basset & Gold had two separate companies, one of which was not FCA-regulated and issued the minibonds, the other of which was FCA-regulated and issued the investment literature.
Which is of course entirely meaningless from the perspective of an ordinary retail investor. Nothing was stopping LCF from setting up two different companies instead of one, and keeping the misselling separate from the bonds themselves, except that they didn’t think of it (or care).
It is therefore not a surprise that the Basset & Gold collapse has given LCF investors fresh hope for compensation.
Commentary
My own money would be on the regulator and the Government as a whole eventually figuring out a Barlow Clowes / Equitable Life solution – i.e. compensation paid, not in line with arcane FSCS rules that even they don’t seem to understand, but on a one-off basis in recognition of regulatory failures which allowed LCF to run longer than necessary and lose more ordinary savers’ money than was necessary. This is what happened in recognition of regulatory failures over Barlow Clowes (in the 80s) and Equitable Life (in the 90s).
The litany of regulatory failures by the FCA is not seriously disputed. The FCA gave London Capital & Finance the “CAT standard” of FCA registration and ignored the systematic misselling of its investments for a further 3 years afterwards despite numerous attempts by outsiders to blow the whistle. As the FCA CEO in charge at the time has now been kicked upstairs to the Bank of England, the FCA is now free to issue regular mea culpas and lessons will be learneds.
Whether the FSCS or the Treasury pays compensation makes little difference as the general public pays either way; nearly everyone pays taxes and nearly everyone pays FSCS levies via use of financial services.
The main obstacle in the way of compensating LCF investors is moral hazard; the fear that if LCF investors are compensated, it will encourage others to invest in schemes paying unrealistically high returns for supposedly safe investments on the assumption that they’ll get their money back if it goes wrong.
The obvious counterpoint to the moral hazard argument is that the exact same argument applied to compensation for Barlow Clowes, the exact same argument applied to Equitable Life, and the exact same argument applies to Basset & Gold. In the first two cases the moral hazard argument was beaten by the argument that such a monumental failure of regulation and Government should result in compensation, and improvements to the regulatory system to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
There is a better way than whataboutery for LCF investors to counter the moral hazard argument; campaign not just for compensation but for the UK to bring the UK’s securities laws out of the 1920s and require all investment securities offered to the public to be regulated by the FCA, as is the case in the US.
If it becomes more difficult to open unregulated investment schemes and promote them to the public, this would counteract the moral hazard incentive to open and invest in them. It offers the taxpayer’s purse a quid pro quo – a one-off compensation payment (trivial in the grand scheme, especially now) in exchange for less economic damage in the future.
Or we could just do nothing and wait for the next wave of unregulated investment scandals, some of which, like Basset & Gold or investments recommended by dodgy FCA-regulated advisers, will inevitably fall onto the public purse. As my old ma always said, if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.
A good and accurate article. However, it should be made clear that not only should the unfortunate investors be compensated for the total incompetence of the FCA, the scum who ran these fraudulent schemes should be rounded up and locked away for a very long time. This would discourage any other lowlife from setting up similar schemes in the future.
I’m all for getting these scumbag brothers and their complicit ‘employees’ locked up ! Even better would be to be reimbursed my ‘investment !
As someone who invested in both L.C.F and Basset and Gold I can see why the F.S.C.A could believe that B&G may have a stronger claim for example.1) I don’t ever remember L.C.F claiming to participate in the F.S.C.S 2), I understand that at least L.C.F invested in 12 dodgy companies unlike Basset and Gold who invested 30 plus million in a single dodgy off shore company under the guise (and selling themselves as) being financiers. A financier has a duty of care towards its client to act in the clients best interest,,:”putting all your eggs in one basket whereby if the borrower goes down the lender goes down also.is an act of negligence 3) B&G refused to pay back some bondholders money at maturity and it goes on and on. B&G sold their bonds starting at £1000 which opened up to them conning more vulnerable investors whereby L.C.F bonds started at £5000.
L.C.F were much more on the ball when it came to conning their punters B&G
.