Fuzzy Brush Products Limited has finally filed its accounts for December 2017, resulting in a strike-off notice that had hung over it since December 2018 finally being lifted.
Fuzzy Brush offered preference shares paying up to 14.43% per year to investors, and also promoted investment in Fuzzy Brush vending machines paying up to 19.7% per year.
Its investments were promoted by the Daily Express tabloid, and also by The Investor Crowd, run by Nick Lomax, who previously ran a company which scammed investors into buying wine that didn’t exist and was banned from being a company director for 11 years. The Investor Crowd claimed investors could “invest safely” by investing in Fuzzy Brush’s high risk unregulated preference shares; its website is now defunct.
Lomax’s ban did not extend to running unregulated websites promoting unregulated preference shares, and there is no suggestion that Fuzzy Brush broke any laws by using Lomax to raise money from high-net-worth and sophisticated investors.
Fuzzy Brush Products was legally required to file its accounts for December 2017 by September 2018. A strike off notice was issued against it in December 2018. Had it succeeded, Fuzzy Brush Products would have been struck off the register and all its assets forfeited to the UK Government.
The strike-off was suspended after a creditor objected, and has now been lifted after the company finally filed its 2017 (and 2018) accounts.
Despite The Investor Crowd claiming “Transparency is Key” in one of its promotions for Fuzzy Brush, the accounts are unaudited, did not include a profit and loss account and provide very limited information – so how they took so long to file is something of a mystery.
From December 2016 to December 2018 Fuzzy Brush Products Ltd’s share capital increased from £1.0 million to £1.9645 million, which seems likely to reflect the issue of £964,500 worth of preference shares to investors.
Retained earnings meanwhile declined from £121k to £49k over the same period, which means the company’s profits in that period did not cover the dividends paid out, and previous years’ profits were used to fund the dividends.
Fuzzy Brush Products remains overdue with its confirmation statement (details of who controls the company) by a year and four months.
Fuzzy Brush continues to promote itself via its investinfuzzybrush.com website, claiming “15% capital growth” and “up to 9.5% fixed interest”, despite having no FCA authorisation to issue financial promotions. It previously claimed in a 2018 puff piece to be targeting an AIM IPO by 2021.