SVS Securities - shut down?

Jamesram

ITI's upate of 11 September

Following on from our communication sent on the 23rd of July, 2020, informing you of a delay in providing you access to your account due to an issue, where ITI Capital received holdings in fractional units when the positions were transferred over from the Joint Special Administrators.

My God, its all down to Leonard Curtis. How foolish and misguided I have been.

adeadsett

So, up til now I have been been very patient, watching, waiting, hoping for the best, remaining calm, but !!!!!!, i've now been thrown out of my inertia by the revelation that Phoenix can not handle AIM holdings. All my investments are in AIM, so what the hell happens now? Most I do not want to sell yet! Unbelievable.

adeadsett

BTW all those exclamation marks in previous post were a swear word !

sweeter_strudel

I went onto a Phoenix account I opened back in early August - as it transpires in error as it is not linked to any previous SVS account - and deliberately tried to get quotes for all my shares - a lot of AIM stuff and each and every share was quoted OK.

This was before the whole onboarding / transfer debacle ground to a halt where I was thinking I should plan ahead in case ITI couldn't trade a particular holding.

It would appear that ITI don't know the capabilities of their own trading platform. That's the one they wrote the software for..... Not that other company called Interactive Broker.... No, no, no.....

My2penneth

I was told that some of my shares weren't supported on the Phoenix platform. Two of them I actually bought using Phoenix (and these "exotica" were FTSE100 shares!). 

I have just logged on to Phoenix to see if the other (ETFs in iShares) are recognised by Phoenix (iShares were the other things that I was told were perhaps not supported and that's why they have not been migrated). Yet, I can log on to Phoenix and lo and behold - they can be bought and are recognised.

I sent a list of my shares to ITI, at their request, so they could expedite transfer out. That was Tuesday. On Friday, they ask me which shares are missing as they want to make sure they are all present before transferring them.  If I give them a full list of shares, why don't they check what is missing and rectify the problem? Is this simply more delaying tactics or just incompetence (or both)? Progress since Tuesday..actually I would say things have gone in reverse. 

Don't ITI Capital know what should be in my accounts?..everything was there in July during the on boarding but now things seems to have gone awry!
 


(edit : just read sweeter_strudel's note - seems like they had the same idea - go on to the PX platform and check for oneself.  I think that because the ITI staff are not necessarily at their workplace, they can't actually log on to our PX accounts).

RasputinB

From the Distribution Plan. Available here https://www.leonardcurtis.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Distribution-Plan.pdf
Pre-Completion Undertakings
4.7 In the four weeks following the delivery of an order of the Court approving the Distribution Plan pursuant to rule 146 of the Rules, the Transferee shall as soon as reasonably practicable:
(a) implement its staffing requirement programme, including completion of interview process, issuing of offer letters of employment to successful candidates and induction and training for new starters; and
(b) procure sufficient completion of the system development by Third Party Service Providers in preparation for receipt of Client Data on Completion pursuant to clause 5.2(b) (Completion).
Also…
7.1 The Transferee shall as soon as reasonably practicable following Completion and no later than the date which is six weeks following Completion:
(a) complete the loading of Client Data into the [REDACTED] (the "Transferee's Systems") and reconciliation against other Client Data validation points (being total lines of stock, quantity by ISIN, number of records and number of clients); and
(b) complete a final reconciliation of all Custody Assets against the Transferee's Systems, Lloyds Bank, Euroclear and additional third party custodians.
And…

9.4 The Transferor shall use reasonable endeavours to make available (at the cost of the Administrators) to the Transferee up to 7 of its retained staff (if any) to assist the Transferee with the transfer of Client Data, in support of the Transfer, following any reasonable request by the Transferee, for the period from Completion until 1 August 2020.

Questions that someone might want to put to Leonard Curtis (if the answers have not already been notified by them)
1. Did ITI Capital implement its staffing requirement programme within the four weeks as required in 4.7 (a)?
2. Was the system development completed on time as in 4.7 (b)?
3. Did ITI Capital complete the loading of Client Data into their Systems and complete reconciliation within the six weeks as in 7.1 (a)?
4. Did ITI Capital complete a final reconciliation of all Custody assets within the six weeks as in 7.1 (b)?
5. Did Leonard Curtis make staff available to ITI Capital to assist with the transfer of Client Data as per paragraph 9.4?
If any of the answers are NO then what are Leonard Curtis now doing to ensure that the Distribution Plan does not fall apart completely?

Michael_Reynolds

I have been in regular email contact with Andrew Poxon & Alex Cadwallader at LC. Mostly one way traffic I have to report! My understanding is that the six week period began on July 23rd (that is the date i received my login details from ITI) and therefore ended on Sept 5th. We are now 8 days beyond the deadline and there is little sign of this shambolic process being resolved in the immediate future! I think we have the answer we need. The distribution plan has already fallen apart. I am appalled by ITI's latest PROGRESS message to us. It now appears that they are trying to blame LC for many of their problems. LC must now front up & answer these questions and I urge everyone to write to them copied to the FCA. I will do so today. I am particularly curious about the claim by ITI that the transfer of portfolios by LC was in fractional amounts?

Michael_Reynolds

I discovered in the last few days that LC have been sitting on more than 100 dividends going back to June which have only just been reconciled. Only five of these were mine andthey wre paid over finally to ITI last Fri. Some long excuse story about CREST.and the FCA's imposed  restriction on LC to use it. It seems that LC only have one SVS employee still working with them so I can't see how they could have provided ITI with 7 as per the distribution plan. The terms of the distribution plan and the key to us resolving this mess. I'm ashamed to say that I have never really read it in entirety.

RasputinB

The "Joint Special Administrators' Second Progress Report" says that " The Distribution Plan has been implemented and the majority of Clients have had their Custody Assets and Client Money returned in full by way of transfer to ITI.  Following completion, the SPA required a period of up to six weeks for ITI to finalise preparing its systems to operate and reconcile the Custody Assets and Client Money received and to conclude its on-boarding checks. The expiry of this six week period was referred to in the SPA as the Settlement Date and occurred on 24 July 2020."

It also says that "Any estimated outcomes for Clients or Creditors included in this progress report are provided for illustrative purposes only and cannot be relied upon as guidance as to the actual outcomes for Clients or Creditors".

Other points–

 “The Administrators are in frequent dialogue with ITI as well as the FCA and FSCS regarding these issues and are closely monitoring the position including through continued liaison with Clients during this period. In addition, the Administrators have provided some additional staff resource to ITI to support their account management team to attempt to resolve Client issues and to enable Clients to gain access to their Custody Assets and /or Client Money as soon as possible.”

Note the weak statement that they “have provided some additional staff resource … to attempt to resolve Client issues…”

Another worry is that they state (twice) that “the EU Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings (2015/848) does not apply to the Special Administration”.

Michael_Reynolds

Wow. I just looked at my ITI onbaording account this morning and three out of the five missing dividends paid by Ishare on June 24th, reconciled by LC in the 11 week intervening period and finally paid over to ITI on last Fri HAVE BEEN UPDATED!!  Forgive the over the top excitement but for me that's a win. Now only two remaining USD dividends from June 24th to update. At current rate i expect to see them in my ITI account tomorrow? How's that for Russian speed and efficiency? 
The correction of two share valuations (both over valued by a factor of 100) and obtaining a Phoenix account are the other outstanding issues. I do note that so far, touch wood, ITI seem to be updating my current dividends quickly and efficently as they receive them.  Could this be a glimmer of light I see at the end of this long Russian tunnel? Further progress update to follow tomorrow. SAMETIME, SAME CHANNEL