macq
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Post by macq on Oct 9, 2019 11:52:21 GMT
assume you mean the article last week on 4th way (and not the general review) which was no exactly glowing the article and the review. And why take that stance of not replying to a review site? No one should consider themself above replying to emails. 4thway are hardly representative of gutter press. Is this intentional lack of transparency; under staffing; lack of respect for lenders? Not sure how much 4th way are regarded within the industry or what other companies do.But i have noticed that they have not replied to the last 3 questions on their funding round from late last week,but did answer the first couple of questions in a day at the start on their own site (and with only well under 10% filled in over a week you think that they would engage more )
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Post by sas100 on Oct 21, 2019 0:57:31 GMT
Anybody understand the 24times calculater for crowd2fund equity fund they are doing? But it not 24 times it's 12 times now.Not many putting money in it this time even with it being eis
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macq
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Post by macq on Oct 21, 2019 8:05:18 GMT
Anybody understand the 24times calculater for crowd2fund equity fund they are doing? But it not 24 times it's 12 times now.Not many putting money in it this time even with it being eis must admit i have not read the proposal details this time around & this is the 2nd or 3rd raise i believe,but did just look at some of their answers to questions on the loan page and they do seem happy to share details (as a side note i am not sure in One answer why they claim to be unique in allowing people to pick self select loans) Some of the write up is very positive as you would expect and the info box claims the company expects to be worth £350m by 2024.But One question asks about the £300m valuation target for 2019 in the first funding round of 2017 and mentions its only £35m now (but not sure if that's correct) And the reply is we they not want to grow to quick and yet at the end of the answer it says they plan to go further and raise another £20m after EIS for a valuation of £1bn and 30% market share.So their going slow but are also going to catch the the others and pass them? I have done well from C2F but have always find their funding rounds full of high valuations and nearly every question on how they hope to get there answered with well that's what the biggest company has done so that's what we will do etc. (i assume they mean FC by their answer) Without to me personally explaining how they will do it or go past FC,RS and the others but at the £5000 starting point of investment i can wish them well and watch from the sidelines
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scooter
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Post by scooter on Nov 25, 2019 15:08:52 GMT
I had an advert for Crowd2fund come up on my face book page today.
"Our fundraise was a massive success, we got £362k, they got a ski-helmet"
I'm guessing this is supposed to attract businesses rather than investors!
Love to know what else investors got?
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zlb
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Post by zlb on Nov 28, 2019 19:32:07 GMT
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scooter
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Post by scooter on Nov 29, 2019 15:37:29 GMT
Doesn't stand up to even the lightest scrutiny.
There are 11 loans classed as "Good" with a last payment date of pre Sept 24th. ie "arrears" or "arrangement"
1 loan has a last payment date of 22/07/2019 so should be "default" based on 3 missed payments instead of "arrears"
"Arrangement" according to the website is "not more that 10 days". Oldest one on here is 05/2018. At least 7 should be "defaults" and 4 "arrears"
"Administration = "Default" in my book.
"Restructured" must have been in "Default" to be restructured i guess. Once a default always a default....
They note defaults as 4.8% but if you ignore the random terminology used to keep loans out of the statistics it is more like 7.8%
They note Late payments as 3.87% in Oct 19. I make it more like 5.8% on their calculation = arrears / total loans ever made. But as repaid or written off loans could not really be late I would say it is more like 10% arrears on active loans not including defaults.
20 minutes work!
I hope the 32 investors in the C2F Equity raise can see something in it that I can't....
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rs
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Post by rs on Dec 3, 2019 21:19:56 GMT
I’d be extremely surprised for the value of C2F to be £350m after 4 yrs. We already know their previous valuation was done by the fairies. We also know they’ve had to compensate lenders with full capital defaulted for certain defaulted loans where C2F apparent outsourced due diligence on the borrower was near enough fraudulent. I expect C2F will become profitable in about 5-6 yrs if they’re lucky (ie impact of economic slowdown) but how much further funding rounds will they need over the next 5 yrs?
I wouldn’t put any cash into C2F as their website is really really bad and they’ve had enough time and investors funds to have improved the C2F website by now.
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zlb
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Post by zlb on Dec 3, 2019 23:02:44 GMT
I’d be extremely surprised for the value of C2F to be £350m after 4 yrs. We already know their previous valuation was done by the fairies. We also know they’ve had to compensate lenders with full capital defaulted for certain defaulted loans where C2F apparent outsourced due diligence on the borrower was near enough fraudulent. I expect C2F will become profitable in about 5-6 yrs if they’re lucky (ie impact of economic slowdown) but how much further funding rounds will they need over the next 5 yrs? I wouldn’t put any cash into C2F as their website is really really bad and they’ve had enough time and investors funds to have improved the C2F website by now. so how does one find out that DD was outsourced to the borrower?
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rs
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Post by rs on Dec 4, 2019 19:17:30 GMT
DD was KYC checks etc. DD on borrower was outsourced to another company. If you want to know more you’ll have to ask them. It just makes me wonder what other things they’re not informing everyone about.
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scooter
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Post by scooter on Dec 13, 2019 15:44:01 GMT
The “Director Background Checks” on the C2F website states:
“…investors can invest safe in the knowledge that our risk team will reject any application where our checks indicate any of the following:
• Any director of the business was also the director of a business which failed from unpaid debt or was the director of a failed business which failed in the same industry in the last 5 years.
The above factors will result in an immediate decline of application”
Man** Hou** Sch*** Director Mr San**p T**nk, was a director of St*neyg*te Coll**** Ltd which was dissolved via Liquidation with no money being returned to Floating Charge Debenture holders, preferential or unsecured creditors.
Acc**s Inst**l Director Mr Le* Sh**n Dick*** was a director of Sail**sh EMEA Ltd which was dissolved via Liquidation with no money being returned to unsecured creditors.
Pl*st*y Limited Director Ter**ce Da**d L**ndes was also the director of Tri-**g Ltd which went into Administration on 26th of June 2012. Secured creditors received back only a third of their debt and unsecured creditors only 16.215p in the pound. Interestingly, Mr L**ndes went on to buy the stock of his failed business and began trading again as Dup**y Limited, which then changed its name to Pl*st*y Limited which he went on to buy the assets of at a knock down price as part of the Administration.
The “Security Review” on the C2F website states:
“The second aspect of our decision to support a loan is a security assessment for the facility. Whilst security isn’t a substitute for a business’s ability to repay their debt, a strong security package will improve the risk profile of the loan and will reduce the level of risk to investors.
Every loan is assessed on a case-by-case basis; however, some sort of security will be required in each instance, ranging from personal guarantees to floating or potentially fixed asset charges.”
During the administration of Pl*st*y Ltd, C2F were found to have failed to have secured the loan with a debenture, having transferred the money to Pl*st*y Ltd before the debenture was created on 12th April 2018. Thus, Crowd2fund became an unsecured creditor and is unlikely to receive a dividend.
C2F noted in an email “Our lawyers are currently taking care of the debenture matter”. However, there is only about 7k left after Administrators fees. Proper due diligence would have shown the Fixed Assets in the business to have little value if sale became necessary. In fact, they have been sold back to the director for £1.1k.
This is a surprise to investors because Fixed assets in the 2017 Balance Sheet displayed for would be investors on the C2F website showed £231k.
However, this balance sheet had £170k switched to Fixed Assets from Current Assets compared to the Balance sheet already filed in Dec 2017 with Companies house. This £170k relates to an “investment” in a classic car purchased on HP with only a “nominal sum of equity” according to the Administrator. This car was returned to the HP company.
The only reason to do this would be to mislead investors and/or C2F. Proper due diligence would have at the very least enabled C2F to display the correct Balance Sheet to investors.
The “Financial Assessment” on the C2F website states:
“In the case of a business applying for debt funding (including loans, mini-bonds or revenue loans), our underwriting team performs an assessment to evaluate the business’s ability to meet repayments over the life of the requested loan.
The primary consideration for our underwriters is the business’s cashflow generation. We look at this in order to gage if they will be able to meet their repayments. Profitability is also considered to assess the business’s longer-term sustainability. We expect a minimum threshold of cash-cover for repayments.”
Integ** Ene*** 2017 Balance Sheet displayed for would be investors on the C2F website had Net Equity of £117k. The Accounts were immediately refiled with Companies house after the loan was arranged showing an actual Net Equity of just £15k.
Proper due diligence would have noted that there was an overdrawn Director’s Current Account included in the Debtors Account. First, this is illegal under the Companies Act something anyone carrying out DD should know. Second there was no reason for it as a dividend paid to the Director to clear the account would not have exceeded retained profit. The only possible reason for this was to improve the account and mislead investors.
The due diligence carried out on Acc**s Inst**l failed to pick up on the fact that Revenue and Current Assets were both overstated in the 2018 accounts by £1.9m, resulting in a Net profit of £281k becoming a Net loss of £670k.
Competent due diligence surrounding the massive increase in Revenue and Debtors would have uncovered an accounting issue which would have undermined the business forecasts and ability to repay the loan.
C***J**** Homes has been restructured into risky balloon payments over a longer period of time with the same interest rate and no extra security without C2F ever having mentioned to investors that the company is in liquidation or recognising it as a default. The payments are being made by a director.
St***ton Trad**g Ltd. appointed a voluntary liquidator on 1st October 2019. C2F acknowledged that the accounts provided on the campaign page were that of H**val Trad**g LLP. it appears that whilst St***ton Trad**g went into Liquidation, H**val Trad**g LLP was never liquidated despite having all the liabilities transferred to Stockton Trading Ltd whilst leaving the cash behind.
O** P**nt S***lies Ltd. Received a loan in Sept 18 and made only 3 payments.
• 28/12/2018 A Default letter was sent
• 11/01/2019 Statutory demand letter was sent
• 19/08/2019 Handed to recovery partners
• 17/09/2019 Email “We are looking at starting legal action” ….. “not cooperating”
• 02/10/2019 Email “Is now in default and passed to recovery”
• 14/11/2019 Written off
The above details show very poor standard of recovery action from C2F but it is worse when you know that the director was made bankrupt on 13/09/2019.
C2F claimed on the website, now removed, that there was nothing left for them from the bankruptcy. I suspect they never even knew the bankruptcy was happening. They would not send me a copy of the Official receiver’s final report to creditors.
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zlb
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Post by zlb on Dec 13, 2019 23:04:13 GMT
Thank you scooter impressive, can think of a few other loans which went into failure very quickly which may show similar, did you check your loans or all loans? How long did it take to establish each of these, and is this all available on CH? So if one can prove that a platform hasn't adhered to what they advertised, then a lender has a right to claim lost money which occurred as a result?
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macq
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Post by macq on Dec 14, 2019 10:04:13 GMT
While i have run most of my C2F down except for some of the early loans which i trust,it was still interesting reading the write up and i must admit a bit worrying about the reporting by them of some issues (because it was like that on One of my loans and that's gave me the idea to pause)Not sure how valid the write ups on 4th Way site are but they do make the point in their review that C2F say they only lend to quality borrowers to fund new projects etc but that some of the current loans say funds will be used for working capital,loan consolidation or even salary for new employees which is maybe not quite the idea as suggested
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scooter
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Post by scooter on Dec 14, 2019 10:19:42 GMT
Hi, I checked my loans which I couldn't sell. They bought back loans MHS (which at that point they were still claiming they had a cross party guarantee for, but so did someone else and it was worthless) AI, IE and Pl.without fuss. I always ask for a final response as the Ombudsman insist on it.
They made me an offer for the remainder of my account before I persued the rest.
I check on CH first but then on Company Check as somehow they find more companies related to the directors (check dates of birth to make sure its the right director) and then cross ference back to CH.
Check the filed accounts against the ones provided to C2F, check for refilings.
The administrators reports are a gold mine of information.
It doesn't take that long to find an issue or not. A bit longer to understand the issue found. I found it worth it as I would pick a pound up off the floor. My money was hard earned and this company does not get to throw it away.
As you say you get a feel for a dud. Happy to help if you find something to investigate.
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zlb
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Post by zlb on Dec 14, 2019 19:59:21 GMT
Hi, I checked my loans which I couldn't sell. They bought back loans MHS (which at that point they were still claiming they had a cross party guarantee for, but so did someone else and it was worthless) AI, IE and Pl.without fuss. I always ask for a final response as the Ombudsman insist on it. They made me an offer for the remainder of my account before I persued the rest. I check on CH first but then on Company Check as somehow they find more companies related to the directors (check dates of birth to make sure its the right director) and then cross ference back to CH. Check the filed accounts against the ones provided to C2F, check for refilings. The administrators reports are a gold mine of information. It doesn't take that long to find an issue or not. A bit longer to understand the issue found. I found it worth it as I would pick a pound up off the floor. My money was hard earned and this company does not get to throw it away. As you say you get a feel for a dud. Happy to help if you find something to investigate. I'm more likely to find 1p on the floor and so that might show that I have my priorities wrong. Thank you, I think I have some learning to do in respect of my consumer(?) rights, even if something is not fscs protected, I did not know that I had any. So is this a claim for mis-selling the investment? Do you think that there has been an improvement in DD, as they said they had made, particularly after your sort of claim?
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rs
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Post by rs on Aug 19, 2020 9:59:06 GMT
After reading this post, i started to discuss with C2F about refudning my investment in Plast**y Ltd. Not having much luck as C2F basically stating their auditor has checked and C2F due diligence on the loan followed FCA regulations and it's upto investors decision to invest. C2F ignoring that C2F did not follow their C2F checks as stated on their website.
Good luck to anyone who invests in C2F but it's going to be a disaster as C2F will need some more injection of funds in 2021 after CBILS revenue stream ends.
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