SVS Securities - shut down?

sweeter_strudel

@kencom

I wouldn't touch a cold caller with a barge pole!

First step - ask yourself how Mendelson know your name, email or phone number, and that you were an SVS customer? If they got any of those details in a dodgy way (the answer is "yes, 100% dodgy" unless you spontaneously phoned them up, asked to be put through to their no win, no fee department? You didn't....) then why would you trust a potentially iffy firm of solicitors to do the right thing on your behalf when trying to get compensation for your dud investment outcomes? Engage with them and you will be on a suckers list forevermore getting approaches out of the blue to reclaim on poor pension transfer advice, credit card fees, bank overdraught fees, that car you bought using PPP,  you  will be  offered all  sorts of stock investments all at pre- IPO stage, the next Bitcoin, etc etc. All of which, after you read their fee small print, will involve them always getting their money first and you always being at the back of the queue getting crumbs at best, or suckered into a series of disastrous investments.

If you bought exotic AIM shares from SVS that were pushed by their brokers which turned out to involve Chinese investors ripping off existing share holders, supported by a board of directors in for a quick buck,  of an African iron ore company that only had to build 384 miles of decent road through jungle terrain to a new deep water port that also was yet to be built, all of this will be in a recorded SVS phone call where they will have proof that you said "yes". They will also have records of Know Your Customer - so unless you said you only ever invest in FTSE100 shares and have a risk tolerance of 0.001 on a scale of 1 to 10, chances of compensation are minimal. Think carefully about every phone call or contact you ever had with SVS if you bought shares, and you will know if a mis-selling claim will stand up in court, or if they will judge you knew the gamble you were taking and just got greedy.

If you invested in SVS' dubious corporate bonds (which was the part of the business that got the FCA spurred into action to shut the whole thing down) then you have a better case. I'd write to Leonard Curtis and ask what compensation is likely and if there is an appropriate legal route to recover more. I think they were still working on salvaging what they could...... Which wasn't going to be much. This forum may have more knowledge on this topic. I do recall some  mention of it.

Any compensation would have to be paid from SVS business assets - and they were not very profitable at all for years - and I presume the Leonard Curtis fees used up all that pot of funds first, or from any "professional indemnity" SVS had in place. This is not my area of expertise but I do recall someone on this board mentioning a successful claim against SVS (obtained via years of debate with the Financial Ombudsman Service?) in the era of before SVS were shutdown but the compensation had not yet been paid when the plug was pulled. They were wondering where they were in the queue of creditors looking for their money back.

It is safe to say any claim is going to take years. And I am not entirely sure if there are any remaining assets or insurance to pay out for any successful claims.

Also of interest will be the actions taken against the SVS directors by the FCA. I'm not holding my breath....

kencom

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Strudel.
I’ll probably give them a miss on this occasion.

kencom

As a side note...

Both my wife and I finally got our accounts transferred out a couple of weeks ago. It has taken dozens of lengthy phone calls since August. 

ITI are an absolute joke of a company, very disappointed in there ability to manage to influx of SVS customers. It has cost us dearly in locked in shares that should have gone into last years ISAs. 

At least the government will gain from the extra CGT we are going to pay...

eskbanker

kencom said:

ITI are an absolute joke of a company, very disappointed in there ability to manage to influx of SVS customers. It has cost us dearly in locked in shares that should have gone into last years ISAs.

Assuming you're referring to 2019/20 ISAs, ITI hadn't even been appointed by 5 April 2020, so it's hardly credible to blame them for any failure to get ex-SVS investments released by then!

kencom

No, you are right. The ISA year was not relevant to ITI. It was an issue with how long it took to appoint ITI. 

My CGT issue was really centred around the fact that I wanted to bed and isa a stock with my current provider in the summer. But the delays from ITI meant that the stock had significantly increased in value during these delays, meaning I could put significantly less shares in my ISA wrapper by the time it had all been sorted.

gonzo7

I reported here previously that most of my assets held at ITI had been transferred out, at long last, which leaves a stock which neither ITI nor IWEB want and for which I’ve asked for a share certificate. 

I did raise a complaint with ITI last year, regarding nil progress, which was eventually met with an offer of compensation - provided that matters remained in confidence.  I accepted the offer.

Now ITI write to me stating “Currently we are not working in the office due to lockdown conditions. Please note I have your request and confirmation of address in a spreadsheet to be sent to operations when conditions open up and allow for office visits.”

So they get me to agree confidentiality then announce that the office is closed and no further progress can be made!  I checked their Covid message on the ITI website and there is no mention of tools down, we’re off duty. 

This lot really do take the biscuit.

Sheris

gonzo7 said:

I reported here previously that most of my assets held at ITI had been transferred out, at long last, which leaves a stock which neither ITI nor IWEB want and for which I’ve asked for a share certificate. 

I did raise a complaint with ITI last year, regarding nil progress, which was eventually met with an offer of compensation - provided that matters remained in confidence.  I accepted the offer.

Now ITI write to me stating “Currently we are not working in the office due to lockdown conditions. Please note I have your request and confirmation of address in a spreadsheet to be sent to operations when conditions open up and allow for office visits.”

So they get me to agree confidentiality then announce that the office is closed and no further progress can be made!  I checked their Covid message on the ITI website and there is no mention of tools down, we’re off duty. 

This lot really do take the biscuit.

That is rubbish not in the office, office staff last week where so loud, laughing and giggling I had a job to have a conversation on the phone to them.
Again complete waste of my time with ITI to there so called promise.

richardpg205

Your lucky you've even got a response, i've had nothing back from them either via email (since october), or via their ticketing (since september) system relating to informtion required to transfer my account from them to another more reputable broker.

I had a transaction in place and was due to complete on the 5th of August 2019, this resulted in it being investigated, another broker became involved as well as the LSE to reverse the transaction and assets returned back. Was advised at the time to setup an account with another broker which i did to then have Leonard Curtis inform me they would be doing a job lot deal. (i paraphrase of course). I have been paying monthly for this account with nothing in it as well whilst i wait.
 A deal which we all know as woefully inadequate in dealing with the client base dumped on their books.

jenwrendorset

Our two accounts which finally transferred in December are still showing the holdings on ITI dashboard, very tempted to try and sell a few of the shares just to see what happens.  Has anyone actually managed to close down an ITI account ?? My own account which was the only one which successfully transferred out in a timely manner has been in the stages of 'closing down' since October and with our empty joint account although I've been 'assured' that all is in order and it will close down, there is an open closure form on the account which is requesting bank details, prooof of photo/address ID which I'm extremely reluctant to send over yet again.  Has anyone else experienced this problem - apart from two aim-delisted shares, we have nothing left with ITI but I would like complete closure.  Our 3 FOS complaint forms have all been acknowledged and have case numbers assigned but will be surprised to hear anything for months, ditto our complaint letters re. the abysmal handling of this by the FCA but not expecting any satisfaction there. If ITI had held their hands up and admitted that this fiasco was out of control then I would have had more sympathy but their one and only offer of compensation was pathetic - we never wanted compensation just access to our assets over which they failed miserably.

richardpg205

I do wonder if there is a legal avenue for negligence/malpractice (group litigation order) we can persue as a group to add  a thousand complaints is a thousand complaints all in a spreadsheet somewhere, a thousand complaints represented by a legal body is im sure viewed very differently by the regulatory body.