SVS Securities - shut down?

[Deleted User]

Well in this instance the client is right and the industry wrong, Eskbanker.
Is it too much to ask that a client shouldn't have to win twice, in finding a good investment and an honest stockbroker?
I have nothing but sympathy for them and their enquiries deserve better than to be met with thinly disguised irritation.

That said masonic's posts are informative, insightful and helpful to those who find themselves in the predicament. 

eskbanker

ZingPowZing said:

Well in this instance the client is right and the industry wrong, Eskbanker.

Thank you for eloquently reinforcing my point about those who can apparently only see things in black and white.

ZingPowZing said:

I have nothing but sympathy for them and their enquiries deserve better than to be met with thinly disguised irritation.

Perhaps they'll find your sympathy helpful - personally I think facts, however unpalatable they may be, are more useful in managing expectations....

ZingPowZing said:

That said masonic's posts are informative, insightful and helpful to those who find themselves in the predicament.

Agreed!

[Deleted User]

Eskbanker - What has the client done wrong, if he is not right?eskbanker said:

ZingPowZing said:

Well in this instance the client is right and the industry wrong, Eskbanker.

Thank you for eloquently reinforcing my point about those who can apparently only see things in black and white.

johnburman

All.  Let's not start arguing amounst ourselves.  We own shares on the XO plaform and we have 'lost' access to them.  It is suggested we will regain access to them in "April/May."  In my view that is simply too long; again in my view LC have been slow.  Finally and again in my view LC should not have been selected by the FCA/board as administrators as they simply do not have the capacity/skills to deal wiht a FS company with 20k clients.  They may be cheap (i.e. cheap for admininstrators; crazy expensive in the real world), but do they have the capacity to deal with this?  I doubt it.  So the question is what is anyone going to to do about it?  Who has written to the FCA pointing out the delay & the extention to tthe bar date (why?)?    

manted

All very valid arguments being presented on the forum. I for one would suggest a change in the law in case of administrations. If the FCA comes across a dodgy share dealing firm, they should not keep their investigation under wraps for 2 years. This action has lead to more unsuspecting / uninformed people joining the dodgy broker. In some cases, losing access to their only source of funds (pension money). How about we all petition for a change in this law ? Its better to act now in order to prevent more dodgy firms getting away with it in the future. LC and their methods have been discussed in detail, but i believe its better to request for a change in the way IB's go into administration. We have many qualified people in the UK who can come up with a better way of doing things.

eskbanker

ZingPowZing said:

eskbanker said:

ZingPowZing said:

Well in this instance the client is right and the industry wrong, Eskbanker.

Thank you for eloquently reinforcing my point about those who can apparently only see things in black and white.

Eskbanker - What has the client done wrong, if he is not right?

I'm not sure there are many other ways of saying it, but to me it's way too simplistic to try to portray this as one party being 'right' and another 'wrong'!

As above, there are various reasons why this situation has arisen - on the face of it the SVS management are primarily responsible (although I don't profess to know the detail there) but there's certainly an argument that there are weaknesses in the FCA's regulation (and potentially the overarching legislation too), and the administrators are coming in for flak too, some of it potentially justifiable.

My point, apparently too subtle for some, is that SVS customers chose not to use more mainstream and stable providers - that doesn't make them 'wrong' or mean that it's 'their fault', so there's no need for you to keep trying to attach emotive labels to this, but it was avoidable and so is ultimately a contributory factor in arriving where they are today. 

I get that you'll see this as unsympathetic and taking sides (the 'wrong' one no doubt), but to me it's important that lessons are learned from situations like this - obviously it's possible to simply point the finger and say it's all x's fault, but personally I don't see that as either accurate or productive, and, as on the other thread about choosing a provider, feel that it's worth highlighting the importance of investors doing enough due diligence about where they put their money.

johnburman

No your point is not too subtle but SVS were not small were properly FCA registered had been trading profitably for nearly 20 years and were members of the London stock exchange. I visited their offices on 2 occasions to deliver docs and have a little look round and they were whilst not opulent wholly sensible and satisfactory. They had an accountant based near Manchester and not one of the big 4 but I thought that was a plus! After the event everyone could see the signs.... Shame nobody told anyone about them! The good news is that the shares seem to be there but there seems to be a delay.... I know others think that is acceptable.... In giving me access to my own shares. 

eskbanker

johnburman said:

SVS were not small

In the context of a UK platform market managing over £500 billion of assets, one with £260 million is a tiddler!

johnburman said:

were properly FCA registered had been trading profitably for nearly 20 years and were members of the London stock exchange. I visited their offices on 2 occasions to deliver docs and have a little look round and they were whilst not opulent wholly sensible and satisfactory. They had an accountant based near Manchester and not one of the big 4 but I thought that was a plus!

Ultimately what this shows is that FCA regulation is necessary but not sufficient, and as above it does seem clear that the FCA has a case to answer. But it still seems to me that due diligence should be more about fundamentals rather than appearance of offices and location of accountants.

johnburman said:

The good news is that the shares seem to be there but there seems to be a delay.... I know others think that is acceptable.... In giving me access to my own shares. 

Not sure anyone's said it's acceptable, more that it's understandable given what's involved. And I'm not sure it's productive to play the 'my own shares' card - by using brokers you implicitly cede management responsibility of those holdings and don't have automatic rights for immediate access in administration scenarios.

Anyway, to a certain extent I'm playing devil's advocate and am not trying to defend the actions (or lack of them) of the various parties involved, so good luck in retrieving your holdings and hope it's all sorted soon!

johnburman

So what as a potential client of an XO stock broker are you meant to do... What other due diligence can you do? Further I bet 9 out of 10 clients did not look at the accounts before becoming a client.
And we need to get real about management responsibility. You can't use paper shares in an  ISA and being realistic who uses paper shares anyway? They always got lost in the post. Let's be honest there is no due diligence you could do that would put you off being a svs client. Cheap and basic XO brokers. Transparent costs and reasonably efficient. Why would anyone not use them? And no XO clients would know about any of the other pension or FX stuff going on. 

masonic

There was lots of useful advice in the early pages of this thread, for example, sticking to the providers with significant assets under management, larger companies with stricter reporting requirements and better corporate governance, those who also operate other financial services with stricter regulatory requirements.

A Google news search would have revealed some of the problems in this case, and in future it might be a good move to set up Google alerts for the companies which hold large percentages of your net worth. One should at the very least have an understanding of whether your chosen provider is profitable and if you are able to invest in individual company shares, reading the accounts should be second nature. Before SVS, I doubt many would advocate taking such measures, but most wouldn't have considered the implications of an investment firm failing under such circumstances until it happened.

Going forward I wouldn't advocate taking the position that some people won't do any due diligence, therefore you shouldn't have to. Either you are willing to take measures to avoid something like this happening to you in the future, or you are willing to leave it up to fate.

I agree that insolvency law has its failings when it comes to the treatment of investors using financial services providers, but the only way to change that is by taking the matter up with your MP and campaigning to get the law changed - something I've suggested on several occasions. It does concern me that those who have been most vocal in grumbling about these matters in a forum thread probably haven't even written to their MP. I have done so in relation to another company that went insolvent holding my assets and I am also pursuing an ongoing complaint against the FCA. I cannot do so in relation to SVS because I am no longer an investor.