In Administration (Col)

My very simple assessment is as follows -

Nearly £6M has already been recovered.
Total costs of administration/liquidation so far have been around £2M (one third).
Thus, the net recovery so far has been just under £4M (two thirds), of which just over half has already been paid out to investors and the other half is due to be paid out soon.

Remaining assets yet to be sold are around £7M...which may be realised over the next 2 years, I'm guessing.

Best case scenario, as I see it,  is that we collectively end up recovering around 50-60% of all losses (net after all costs). Individual losses will obviously vary depending on individual exposure.

I'm not assuming the above will happen but I do think it's possible looking at the figures to date. Also, a lot of the donkey work is behind us now. A lot's hanging on the realisable value of Bolton, though - that could be very painful for some of us.

Fingers' crossed.

As I have noted in previous posts the position of the chattels loans and their exact status is grim and uncertain.


Naturally investors who were in these loans are very concerned and when you look at the figures there are some very large ‘discrepancies’.


As the BDO report released yesterday says

“As set out in our previous reports, all known chattel assets securing the chattel loan book had been collected by our agents, following the borrowers’ refusal to settle the outstanding amounts due.

We have previously advised that there are significant discrepancies between the book value of these assets in the Companies’ records and the estimated values provided by the independent agents engaged by the Joint Liquidators. We have also previously advised that the directors had been unable satisfactorily to explain these discrepancies.

We instructed our agents to place the chattel assets which have been collected from borrowers into auction. The majority of the chattel assets were sold and the total amount realised was c£125,000.
A small number of the chattel assets remained unsold as the reserve prices for these chattels were not met at the auction, and we am liaising with our agents to complete the sale of the remaining assets.
Once that has been completed, a detailed breakdown of the amounts realised in respect of each chattel loan will be circulated.

We have also continued our investigations in relation to potential additional chattel loans which had not been disclosed at the outset of the preceding Administrations. This is another matter that the directors were asked to clarify (they having been formally interviewed by the Joint Liquidators under s236 of the Act), but they have been unable to provide any further assistance.

Our investigations and enquiries in relation to this matter are ongoing, however, it appears unlikely that any of these potential loans will be recovered.”

So what do we know?

BDO have previously stated (previous report) that the ‘value’ (valuations are suspect as shown in the quote) of the loans it has identified were approx £1.67m.
Other reports omit giving figures.

When the platform closed the data shows that the chattels were valued at approx £2.85m (provable with data extracted just before closure).

This information was passed to BDO early on in their work.

So there is almost certainly a discrepancy of approx £1.18m between investor schedules and the loans identified by BDO.

The brothers have been interviewed and have been unable to give assistance(!).

So what we have is a situation where nearly half the chattel loans have not been recognised and the other half (£1.67m) sold off for c£125K.

The FCA are unable and unwilling to disclose if investigations into the chattel loans are ongoing but I have established that so far (FOI dated a couple of weeks ago) that the police have not been involved.

I think we should be carefull discussing that here, suffice to say that the FCA currently have freezing orders in place, but the key words here are "Until trial or further order of the Court" & "England and Wales".

Taken from here  
To preserve assets: It is usual for a Claimant to seek a freezing injunction before proceedings have been issued in order to prevent a Defendant from disposing of their assets which may result in a Judgment being unsatisfied. On the other hand, freezing orders can also be sought at any point in proceedings and also following a Judgment being made.


I have no further words on the conditions applied other than those given to me in the answer given to my FOI.

Despite my bank details remaining the same throughout this sorry saga, BDO failed to pay me the interim dividend from last year.
When I queried it with them they said it was an administrative error and I will be paid in the next round.
They failed to pay me, and emails sent to The INVESTORCOLLATERAL@bdo.co.uk are ignored.

Can anyone advise who I can contact to force BDO to pay me the interim dividend from 2023?

I'm just waiting for the administrators to file suit against the FCA.  I'll probably be dead before that sees out.