SVS Securities - shut down?

pafpcg

johnburman said:

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Now for the (very) few for whom the FSCS is not picking up the tab - mainly large companies or those with huge cash accounts they have problems
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Are you sure about that? In a world without FSCS compensation, if the costs are charged to all clients at a flat rate (excluding those with assets less than the charges) then everyone pays the same: £10k.  That's not going to bother clients with high-value accounts, say £1million+. 

In fact, provided one is eligible for FSCS compensation, then the £85k limit is immaterial!  The cost of recovery of our assets has been £10k per client which will be covered by FSCS - it matters naught whether my account contained £10k or £10million.  What seems to matter is the overall cost of administration - what if Lloyds Banking Group collapsed taking with it all my bank accounts and the tens of thousands in my IWEB ISA?  The cost of adminstration of LBG would be enormous (fortunately spread over many clients), which might exceed £85k compensation.  The lesson to be learned is not to restrict the value of one's portfolio in any one platform, but to select a platform whose potential costs of administration would be less than £85k/client!

Or have I misunderstood how costs of administration would be apportioned to clients?  A flat-rate fee for all clients does seem to me to be unfair upon those with smaller accounts.

masonic

pafpcg said:

johnburman said:

..........
Now for the (very) few for whom the FSCS is not picking up the tab - mainly large companies or those with huge cash accounts they have problems
........

Are you sure about that? In a world without FSCS compensation, if the costs are charged to all clients at a flat rate (excluding those with assets less than the charges) then everyone pays the same: £10k.  That's not going to bother clients with high-value accounts, say £1million+. 

In fact, provided one is eligible for FSCS compensation, then the £85k limit is immaterial!  The cost of recovery of our assets has been £10k per client which will be covered by FSCS - it matters naught whether my account contained £10k or £10million.  What seems to matter is the overall cost of administration - what if Lloyds Banking Group collapsed taking with it all my bank accounts and the tens of thousands in my IWEB ISA?  The cost of adminstration of LBG would be enormous (fortunately spread over many clients), which might exceed £85k compensation.  The lesson to be learned is not to restrict the value of one's portfolio in any one platform, but to select a platform whose potential costs of administration would be less than £85k/client!

Or have I misunderstood how costs of administration would be apportioned to clients?  A flat-rate fee for all clients does seem to me to be unfair upon those with smaller accounts.

Interestingly in cases where investors are exempt from FSCS cover, such as mini-bonds, P2P, etc, flat-rate fees would be hugely unpopular and don't tend to be proposed, whereas when the FSCS picks up most of the bill, creditors generally prefer for their fees to come in below the FSCS limit for as many investors as possible. The FSCS ought to have a duty to minimise the amount they have to pay out (which comes out of industry funding and is ultimately paid for by the consumer), but seems to err on the side of covering as much as possible without overtly breaking any laws.

It could be argued that some elements of the work carried out by the administrators are the same for each investor regardless of portfolio size, and some of the work would be proportional to the number of holdings rather than the value of those holdings, so people with 100+ shares in their account and a large trading history ought to pay more. Trying to make things fair could make them horribly complex. Also, what constitutes fairness is probably impossible to get wide agreement about.

johnburman

I'm more worried about my shares going walkabout than the fees. I think with Bernie Madoff in mind that actually getting my shares back is much more important than the fees charged in the administration. Hence my keenness to limit the amount of any holding to £85k 

englishmas

My Current valuation of the XO account ~ £11k ,the LC admin cost £11500.
Even FCSC are paying it is too high, well, LC can get away with windfall!!!!

masonic

englishmas said:

My Current valuation of the XO account ~ £11k ,the LC admin cost £11500.
Even FCSC are paying it is too high, well, LC can get away with windfall!!!!

It's especially unfortunate in your case as before these costs you would have walked away with £96k in shares and FSCS compensation for your Financial Ombudsman decision. So you are actually out of pocked to the tune of £11k as a result of the charges.

min2max

please help—missing shares from final Leonard Curtis client statement

Please can someone help or explain to me about missing inft shares. I held mine with Svs securities- which is now in special administration. I received a statement from Leonard Curtis the administrator in aug2019 advising me of all shares held in Svs- inft was on this list. However they have issued a new statement of all my shares to be transferred to new broker next month and inft shares ain’t there. I have emailed them and this is the response I got:

Thank you for your email. The xxxxxxx shares you held in INFINITY ENERGY S.A. which were shown on your 5th August 2019 statement were deleted by CREST on 18th September 2019. 
The company had its AIM listing cancelled on 16th April 2018, hence why the CREST system eventually removes them from the system. I’m afraid you are no longer a holder of these shares as they no longer exist.

Are my shares completely lost or how do I retrieve them??? Not sure on my next steps here. Any advice welcome from more experienced and knowledgeable investors.

bowlhead99

min2max said:

I received a statement from Leonard Curtis the administrator in aug2019 advising me of all shares held in Svs- inft was on this list.

However they have issued a new statement of all my shares to be transferred to new broker next month and inft shares ain’t there. 

Are my shares completely lost or how do I retrieve them??? Not sure on my next steps here. Any advice welcome from more experienced and knowledgeable investors.

You should still be an owner of the shares in the company (Infinity Energy SA which was redomiciled from Luxembourg to Guernsey in May 2019 and is now Infinity Energy Limited), but the shares no longer exist in the Crest system as it was suspended and delisted from the AIM market after sitting around as a cash shell for too long, and deleted from Crest 18 months after that. They have (or at least had) an intention to relist on the London market as part of a reverse takeover transaction with another company owned by one of the directors and major shareholder. However that has not yet come to fruition.

At the end of 2017 (audited accounts) or mid 2018 (unaudited update) , there were 1.7 billion shares in issue and a few hundred grand of net assets, and were burning through what cash they had left. Two years later your shares are likely to be effectively worthless and you have no practical power to make yourself heard on anything at a general meeting given the main director has several hundred million shares.

The above from https://investegate.co.uk/Index.aspx?searchtype=3&words=inft and https://infinityenergy.eu/about-us/ 

While the shares no longer exist electronically in the Crest system as they are no longer capable of being traded on a stock exchange, the company should still be maintaining their register of members/ shareholders. However presumably if they were held in the name of SVS's nominee company rather than your personal name, you would need the administrator of SVS or their successor to ensure that the records reflect your beneficial ownership  So, you should pursue that with Leonard Curtis to ensure they liaise with any successor nominee company and/or Infinity Energy's company secretary / registrar so that your ownership record is preserved. However, you can't do anything with the shares as they are not listed or traded on any market and nobody would want to buy them from you unless/until the company achieves a listing as part of a future transaction.

But this is not new news; at the time SVS went into administration the shares had been suspended for almost a year and a half - their AIM listing was cancelled in April 2018.
  

desertorchid123

Is anyone else a holder of any of the Corporate Finance Bond issues? They have been valued at 0 on the client statement which is seemingly primarily because they were delisted last August and therefore no market value can be attributed. They been paying interest, suggestive of an ongoing asset value but I was wondering what the status of these investments actually was and if, in fact any value now exists in them. I cannot see at present how they can be transferred to another broker.

masonic

desertorchid123 said:

Is anyone else a holder of any of the corporate finance bond issues? They have been valued at 0 on the client statement which is seemingly primarily because they were delisted last August and therefore no market value can be attributed. However, despite the fact that it has been paying interest, suggestive of an ongoing asset value,  I was wondering what the status of these investments actually was. If, in fact any value now exists in them.....

SVS defaulted on their mini-bonds. It is not expected that at the end of the administration there will be any money with which to make any payment to unsecured creditors, such as the bondholders.

desertorchid123

masonic said:

desertorchid123 said:

Is anyone else a holder of any of the corporate finance bond issues? They have been valued at 0 on the client statement which is seemingly primarily because they were delisted last August and therefore no market value can be attributed. However, despite the fact that it has been paying interest, suggestive of an ongoing asset value,  I was wondering what the status of these investments actually was. If, in fact any value now exists in them.....

SVS defaulted on their mini-bonds. It is not expected that at the end of the administration there will be any money with which to make any payment to unsecured creditors, such as the bondholders.

Yes, I have been made aware of the the SVS bonds being worthless. I was just wondering about the other bond investments recommended by SVS. They have been mentioned in previous literature from LC. It seems one of the reasons FCA intervened was due to the risk profile not being accurately portrayed and some dubious loan arrangements made with the bond issuer. Hopefully LC will have some answers.