SVS Securities - shut down?

johnburman

This will surprise no one. LC website has removed the Report of the Meeting on 17th October and slideshow presentation given at the Meeting of 17 October from their website. The links are there but not the contents. A 404 ERROR came up

Very odd

Wonder why?

eskbanker

johnburman wrote: »

This will surprise no one. LC website has removed the Report of the Meeting on 17th October and slideshow presentation given at the Meeting of 17 October from their website. The links are there but not the contents. A 404 ERROR came up

Very odd

Wonder why?

The PDF documents themselves are still in situ, even though the HTML pages linking to them don't seem to be.

View the actual report and slides at:

https://www.leonardcurtis.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Report-on-the-Outcome-of-the-Initial-Meeting-of-Clients-and-Creditors-on-10-October-2019-17.10.2019.pdf

https://www.leonardcurtis.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Slideshow-Presentation-made-to-the-Meeting-of-Clients-and-Creditors-on-10-October-2019-17.10.2019.pdf

and take copies if you fear there's anything underhand going on!

Twonko

The LC website seems to have completely changed and loads of material is no longer available. At best this is a loss of transparency, at worst it’s dodgy. It’s also about time we got at least a significant % of our assets back.

Ravima

it takes time to confirm and reconcile the assets of all 21000 clients. I have no doubt it the Administrator could do it quicker, they would.

snipkin

ShareSoc is making a submission to the Law Society which includes the problems of nominee share accounts which is particularly relevant to us with accounts at SVS. The details are under the heading 'Law Commission Review of Intermediated Securities Consultation' (I cannot post weblinks).
A pertinent quote is: “The Law Commission should also consider converting the role of nominee to that of an agent, in effect abolishing the practice of using the term ‘nominee’ on share registers. Agents (ie stockbrokers) can continue to provide chargeable services as at present, even being named on share registers as such, but only in a subsidiary role to that of the investors named as shareholders. This is the separation of services from ownership, freeing investors from being trapped in nominees but leaving brokers and others free to derive the same sort of income as now. It is the power of computers and the internet that gives investors today’s ease of dealing in shares, not the use of nominees.”
SVS is included in a long list of examples of problems with the nominee account system. I have over £150K in shares invested via SVS which, like you all, I may not be able to access until (it seems) April 2020! I rely on dividends to supplement my smallish pension and I have had to severely cut back on my outgoings since August. Not to mention the sleepless nights and trying not to worry the wife…
Clearly, I misunderstood the exact nature of nominee accounts and I never even considered the possibility of what has happened to SVS. There are always warnings about not investing above £85K in building societies but I have never seen such warnings attached to share dealing services. and that we should spread our money around more than one company. (How stupid of me, in retrospect, not to at least use two different services…)
The so-called ‘ring-fencing’ of our assets means nothing if our investments can be taken from us by the administrators to pay for their fees and other monies owing to whoever… If it was properly ring-fenced the share dealing part of SVS should be cleanly separated and moved to another dealing service immediately with little interruption of service and no loss of money. This needs to be addressed ASAP.
I feel powerless to able to do anything but wait and suffer and perhaps lose money (but in all probability I, like nearly all of us I guess, will be fully compensated for any losses via the 85K ‘cover’). To quote from the film ‘Airport’, I picked the wrong time to taper off my antidepressants…

eskbanker

snipkin wrote: »

To quote from the film ‘Airport’, I picked the wrong time to taper off my antidepressants…

Apologies for completely missing the point of your post but for the sake of some spurious pedantry, it is of course the legendary "Airplane" that you're referring to!



But that's not important right now....

samuzza

Got a letter from Winterflood Securities today about an unsettled trade with SVS.

The gist of the letter is I need to pay Winterflood for a trade that happened on the 1 August. If I don't, they will 'close out' the trade and claim any loss from me.

If I settle with Winterflood directly, that means I will have paid for the shares twice. In that case, how would I go about reclaiming the money SVS took from me?

Also, to proceed they want details of my broker. I don't have another broker. And Since I live abroad, it's not easy for me to get another broker in the UK.

Any one else in a similar situation with an unsettled trade? Any advice?

I will contact Winterflood and LC today, but any thoughts and suggestions appreciated.

NZPK

I'm not an expert here but I would say in this case SVS should still be considered your broker and therefore LC need to act on their behalf. It's not your responsibility if SVS failed to fully execute your trade. I think Winterflood should be dealing with LC as the special adminstrator rather than pursuing you. That's not much help to you I guess. Hopefully LC can advise you once you speak to them.

Danie5

I also got a letter from Winterflood Securities regarding an unsettled trade and I am also a non resident. I have no extra funds to throw into this dustbin, so what now?

NZPK

Winterflood sounds more than a bit predatory in these interactions. I would be careful of fraud risk. Definitely don't send money without checking with LC for your potential liability.