Upshot from ACA email

Okay, folks, this is my take.

Obviously, I must first proceed by saying that I have no financial training whatsoever, that I’m a programmer and a teacher by profession. So, I have no idea what I’m talking about. But this is my take anyway.

The ACA Lawyers wrote to registered investors yesterday to indicate to us that they would not be pursuing a class action in this case, because some other lawyers were already on it. The lawyers that are on it, are the infamous Piper Alderman of Trilogy fame. However, Piper are only perusing class action for the First Mortgage fund, not the MPF fund.

So, no one is taking class action against MPF. Oh, but they’ll happily direct you to Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and take it further on your behalf.

For First Mortgage investors, I guess this is good news, except:

  • Trilogy doesn’t have a great track record
  • They probably have really high expenses
  • It’s Trilogy representing you

For MPF investors, this is why this sucks:

  • The FOS are not a “day in court” in any sense of the matter.
  • You don’t need a lawyer to proceed with FOS (assuming FOS takes your case, they can refuse to)
  • I think you have to do it individually, one case at a time, so it’s not even a “class action”
  • It’s not clear if using FOS is even possible and a reader of the site concurs.

In other words, the ACA email is another reminder as to how screwed up the MPF fiasco is. With each passing day,  legal “protections” around it seem to be falling flat on its face. From its inception, if anyone bought into this fund, and something happened to it, there was never any legal recourse for it at all.

Obviously no one who buys a fund would think that it’s absolutely 100% safe. But this wasn’t even 50% safe. It was most likely to fail for investors, from the way it was set up, including its legal status. This isn’t a case of a fund going south and investors being upset by it going south, this is fund that would almost certainly go belly up and investors being told that it was, on the risk scale, on the low-risk side.

That’s just outright fraud, people.

This is why, I continue to assist, that MPF investors drum the beat as loud as we can about what happened here. We were sold a fund with a very dubious legal position. This is the message we should be sending. How can ASIC have even allowed this fund to be sold in the first place?

The only legal recourse for MPF investors is that which is being pursed by Korda Mentha. Obviously, it is frustrating because they don’t update us often enough, but that really is the best bet right now. And remember, they just got full access to the books, which is vital for court proceedings, so it’s going to be a while before we hear anything else. The last update they gave was a good sign.

Again that’s my take. Feel free to disagree, or elaborate, with me in the comments.

2 Responses to Upshot from ACA email

  1. Cathy Stott says:

    Thank you for that. Now at least those of us that didn’t get an email know what is happening/not happening.

    I would like to contact Glenn about UK action group but I do not want to pubish my email on here at this stage.

    Is there some way round this problem?

    CS

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