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).
Pardus’ associated company, GRMA-Pardus Wealth Limited, is up to date with its accounts. Its last accounts for April 2020 claimed £39m in net assets with £103m in gross assets and £64m in liabilities, but the accounts were unaudited so are worthless for due diligence purposes without further verification. The accounts showed little other information and how much of those liabilities relate to Pardus investors is not clear.
Unregulated “boutique investment house” Meredith Charles, which states that it has “had a direct involvement in financially engineering Pardus Fixed Income Bond” and that it pays “generous commissions” for introducers who sell it, claims on its website that Pardus “significantly outperforms other fixed-rate offerings”.
Due to its inability to file accounts in a timely fashion, it is impossible in reality to verify how well Pardus is performing, or how much money is at stake.
Pardus, run by former bicycle salesman Greg Bryce, offers bonds paying 1% per month / 12% per year (2%pm / 24%pa via some introducers).