Krono Partners launched in 2013 and offered unregulated seven-year bonds paying interest of 8% per year, plus variable payments of 20% of the company’s assets. Krono Partners aimed to generate returns by investing in distressed real estate in the United States and Europe.
In 2017, with the distressed asset bonds approaching their five year anniversary, Krono Partners issued a further series of bonds, this time offering 10% per year over five years. This time investors’ money was to be used to invest in bridging finance for small and medium enterprises.
According to an investor on Moneysavingexpert.com, Krono Partners stopped paying interest in the beginning of 2018, still two years shy of the repayment date of its 2013 bonds.
A Companies House filing yesterday reveals that Krono Partners has gone into administration.
More to follow when the administrator’s report has been made available.
How do I get my money back from Krono Partners?
If you invested in Krono Partners, you should be on your guard against anyone contacting you and telling you that they can recover your money. It is highly likely that you will be targeted by fraud recovery fraud. If anyone asks you to pay “legal fees” or “liquidation fees” to release your money it is almost certainly a scam. The administrators will not collect any fees directly from investors; the administrators always stand first in the queue and will collect their fees before any money is paid to investors (if any).
Whether there is any prospect of recovery from Krono Partners itself is in the hands of the administrators.
A sorry tale that is all too often being told. Some people call these things scams but those operating these investments vehemently deny they are operating a scam. The definition of a scam seems different for different groups of people.
The upshot is that “investment newbies”, ignorant of the risks, more often than not persuaded by the smooth talking unregulated “Del boys”, lose a lot of money.
No “sophisticated” investor would, in my opinion, entertain such investments unless they were simply spending a TINY proportion of their portfolio just for the fun of a speculative punt – a bit like a fiver each way on the National. You don’t expect to win, but you might and you’re just buying an “adrenalin rush”.
The problem is the majority of people investing in these types of bonds are “newbies” – as the moneysavingexpert link provided in the article attests and are not just having a “punt”. They are often investing sizeable proportions of their savings.
The many, many bonds reported on this site are exclusively “unregulated” and all have the potential of failing. I wager, we will see, over time more follow up reports like this one as each of the reported unregulated bonds collapses.
What I don’t understand is why it “appears” unregulated bonds can be legitimately promoted to retail clients (the likes of “investment newbies”) whereas unregulated collectives cannot. FSMA seems to protect – in theory at least, in reality, not – retail clients from unregulated collectives but allows them to fall foul of these bonds. Unregulated bonds appears to be the “new black” for scammers to relieve you of your life savings!
And I don’t see anyone fighting to change this!