Crowdstacker / Amicus article today

The evidence of Mr Patel of Crowdstacker included the following (albeit addressing a different point),

"[Crowdstacker] is not a secured creditor in its own right but is a security trustee for 418 individual lenders to Amicus. All 418 have individual and direct loan contracts with Amicus and are individual creditors of Amicus".

Thus, rather than itself being a creditor, Crowdstacker was simply the security trustee for a large number of individual lenders who had advanced loans to the company using the Crowdstacker lending platform. Properly analysed, those individual lenders were secured creditors of Amicus.

This gave rise to two potential issues. First, as a practical matter, although the 418 individual lenders were the secured creditors of Amicus with whom the compromise constituted by the Restructuring Plan was to be made, it appeared that they had not been given any notice of the hearing or informed about the proposed restructuring at all. Mr Haywood told me that the Administrators had proceeded on the assumption that Crowdstacker would operate as a conduit for the provision of information to those underlying lenders, and expressed some doubt as to whether the Administrators had up-to-date contact details for the underlying lenders in any event. There was, however, no evidence that the underlying lenders had, in fact, received notice via Crowdstacker or otherwise.

After I raised the issue with Counsel and invited the parties to consider the position over the weekend, Mr Mace informed me on instructions that Crowdstacker had decided to exercise what it contended was its right under the arrangements which it had with the individual lenders to novate the individual loan contracts with Amicus to a company in the Crowdsacker group. This would have the intended result that Crowdstacker would become the legal and beneficial owner of the loans, with an obligation to make payments to its underlying investors from any recoveries it obtained pursuant to the terms of the Restructuring Plan. Although I was shown a draft deed of novation, I did not hear submissions, and therefore give no indication, as to whether such purported novation would have the intended effect. The amounts outstanding as at 30 April 2021 to each of the Secured Creditors is as follows:

i) £4,736,275 plus fees to be agreed is owed to Crowdstacker. Mr Haywood indicated that the fees were expected to be relatively small (in the region of £50,000) and would have little if any impact on the voting outcome at Plan Meetings; and