Following last week's FCA shutdown of new investment into Buy2LetCars, Smith & Williamson has unceremoniously dumped CEO and owner Reginald Larry-Cole from an "Entrepreneur's Hall Of Fame".
Google's cache shows that on Friday 19th, the day of the FCA's intervention, the hall of fame entry was still up. But at some point after this it was quietly removed.
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After over 8 years in operation, the Buy2letcars investment scheme has been closed to new investment by the FCA.
A "first supervisory notice" placed on Buy2letcars' parent company, Raedex Consortium, prohibits the company from carrying out any regulated activities other than collecting payments on vehicle leases that were already in place.
Buy2letcars solicits investment via social media and radio ads from the public, whose money is used to purchase a car to be leased out to a borrower. As the investment is unregulated, the FCA does not technically have the power to stop Buy2letcars taking in investment. However, FCA does have the power to stop Buy2letcars arranging new vehicle leases, and if Buy2letcars can't arrange new vehicle leases, it can't take in new investment as it can't do anything with it.
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Bentley Global has filed accounts for August 2019, 5 months overdue (even after allowing for the Covid 3 month extension). In doing so it has earned a reprieve from a strike-off action issued by Companies House in November and suspended the following month.
Bentley Global's August 2018 accounts showed that it had raised £4.8 million in its bonds paying 12 - 20% per year. That figure swelled to £8.6 million by August 2019.
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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).
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Last month I reviewed Concept Capital's unregulated investment scheme which promises investors 10% per year "guaranteed" for investing in static homes.
Last week Concept Capital got in touch and took issue with various parts of the review. The only part on which they provided any significant new information was the section where I'd discussed the risk that Concept Capital could be viewed by the FCA as an unauthorised investment scheme.
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High Street Group has finally filed the December 2018 accounts for its holding company, High Street Grp Limited [sic].
Having achieved the rare feat of being overdue with not one but two sets of accounts for the same company, High Street Group remains overdue with the High Street Grp accounts for 2019, and 2018 and 2019 accounts for High Street Commercial Finance Limited.
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The strike-off notice filed against Fluid Trust plc last month, after it failed to file annual accounts on time, has been suspended.
The most likely reason for the notice being suspended is an objection from a creditor or HMRC.
Fluid Trust plc remains overdue with its November 2019 accounts (a criminal offence) and Companies House may resume the striking off process if this continues.
Ajaz Shah, owner of the unregulated investment scheme Fortitude Capital, has been arrested in Italy and accused of a vicious campaign of violence and abuse against his ex girlfriend.
As reported by the Daily Mail:
Continue reading...A millionaire City trader has been placed under house arrest in Italy after a court heard he had allegedly beat up his ex-girlfriend and threatened to burn down her home by setting his Lamborghini sports car on fire.
Ajaz Shah Hussain was held by police in the Italian resort town of Rimini after also allegedly threatening to release a sex tape he had made with her, according to authorities.
The Buy2Letcars group of companies, consisting of Buy 2 Let Cars Limited (which borrows money from investors promising returns of up to 11% per year), Wheels 4 Sure (which uses the money to lease cars) and Raedex Consortium Limited (parent holding company) have all filed their accounts for the year ending December 2019.
The accounts have been filed using small company exemptions and did not include profit and loss accounts, and were unaudited. They therefore contain limited information.
What little we do know includes that the overall group has continued to lose money (as it did in 2018 and 2017). Raedex Limited shows net liabilities expanding from £9.5 million in 2018 to £10.9 million in 2019, while the "retained profits" line fell from minus £14.1 million to minus £18.1 million (suggesting losses of around £4 million over the year).
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On the turn of the year, High Street Group, which had already been overdue with its 2018 accounts by 15 months, fell overdue with its 2019 accounts as well.
Private limited companies must by law file accounts with Companies House nine months after the end of the accounting year. This deadline was temporarily extended to twelve months due to lockdown. High Street Commercial Finance Limited and High Street Grp Limited fell overdue with their December 2018 accounts in September 2019 and are now also overdue with their December 2019 accounts.
The company has repeatedly blamed the pandemic for both failure to repay investors' money on time and for its failure to file accounts. Why the three month extension given by the Government to all businesses is not enough for High Street Group, and what this has to do with their December 2018 accounts which were overdue months before the pandemic started, has never been fully explained.
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