LM Investment Victims

From the Australian, and it seems that BDO and KoraMentha are cooperating:

Receivers at KordaMentha to another fund previously managed by LM Investment Management, the Managed Performance Fund, have also been added to the legal action.

But with MPF having no cash left against which to claim, BDO is seeking control of MPF’s remaining assets so it can recoup its claimed $20m when future assets are sold.

BDO’s claim relates to some of the proceeds of litigation launched after the group’s collapse being paid to MPF rather than to the First Mortgage Income Fund, which should have had priority given the terms of its charge.

MPF had a second-ranking charge.

Not good news for MPF of course. Further comment welcome.

Quite interesting. More comment later.

A welcome addition to the ongoing saga.

I just had a query about this bit:

More than 500 investors have contacted each other across international borders to form victim groups, share knowledge and build a legal case – which is being backed by lawyers from Slater & Gordon in Australia.They have spent the past year and eight months researching the company and the fund, how it operated and how they were all lured into it.

Wait, I thought Slater & Gordon said they weren’t going to pursue this any further?

Okay, this may be one of the more important posts, so listen up:

You got questions? What, exactly, happened? Who is to blame? The key question that I’ve been trying to figure out: What can victims do? Seems like there’s some someones who can help answer them.

While this website and others have done their best to help, the reality is that we’re not experts and the thing is complicated, and in many ways the scam depends upon being complicated in order to thrive. So I am delighted to learn that The British Chamber of Commerce Thailand has arranged for 2 speakers who apparently are well known in the Bangkok area, where many of the victims seem to be concentrated. I’m not going to be able to attend this event (details below) due to my existing commitments, but if I could, I’d be there in a heartbeat.

Paul Gambles, who is the founding partner of financial consultancy MBMG Group, has been warning investors of the risks posed by LM and similar funds since 2008. So if he was sounding the alarm bells, how come others recommended it as “low-risk”? And Andrew Batt, who is the senior editor of Property Guru Magazine, has also written extensively about property investment scheme failures. They both are going to take questions from victims, bystanders, and interested parties alike. They both insist that they have no axes to grind, they just want to pass on their knowledge to anyone who may benefit, including investment advisors.

Please see below, click here to book.

BCCT – MBMG Insights

presents

As safe as houses?

In the last few years more investors have fallen prey to questionable schemes and outright scams built around such supposedly safe assets as property, legal services, life insurances and physical assets such as forestry. In many cases the structure of the offering or the distribution behind it were major contributory factors to investors substantially losing their investments.

Join Andrew John Batt, International Group Editor of Property Guru Group and Paul Gambles, co-founder of MBMG Group and Managing Director of SEC licensed financial advisory practice MBMG Investment Advisory as they explain the importance of due diligence, why very high profile schemes have really failed and what victims can be doing right now, and why sometimes seemingly secure and familiar investments can actually be as dangerous as houses.

Date: Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Time: 6.30 – 8.30 pm

Venue: Study Room, 2nd Floor, Hilton Sukhumvit Bangkok, Sukhumvit Soi 24 (Phrom Phong BTS Station Exit 4)

Cost: THB 850 net for BCCT members & THB 1,100 net for non-members including cocktail food, soft drinks, beer and wine.

Sponsored by:

MBMG Group

Via International Advisor, I hear about this. Apparently, a class action law firm are trying to contact us fellow investors. However, it’s not at all clear how they are doing so. I haven’t heard anything, and they don’t seem to have any discernible online presence, either.

Their quoted advice is worth repeating:

Typically investors are told of exaggerated returns, low risks and various guarantees, LM is no exception to this rule. Funds in overseas schemes which are unregulated are high-risk, offer no access to redress for investors through regulatory means and are ultimately difficult to verify or value. Caution should always be taken when entering into such volatile products, and they are a definite no-go for retail clients.

Very true.

Further to this post that instigates that perhaps some Independent Financial Advisors may be leaving Thailand, I am wondering if anyone has received communication from those named entities: PFM and SCI Group.

In Thailand, it is illegal to be giving financial advice without being registered with the government. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from. I’m probably simplifying the law. But anyway, if any of you have gotten an email from them saying, to the effect, “We are leaving Thailand,” I’d be interested to know about it.

Please forward any such email to lminvestmentvictims@gmail.com.

Now that summer is here, there are some things you can do to help with recovery actions. First of all, subscribe to this blog and receive email updates whenever I post here. Go the LM Investment Victims Centre website (link available above) and seriously consider joining the letter-writing campaign.

As you might imagine, I get CC’d in a lot of emails that are not meant for public consumption, and there is indeed a lot of activity going on. Best way for you to hear about them yourself and to get wind of it all is to register yourself as many places as you can. I’m not able to completely divulge information, nor do I want to be in a position to do so, either. It’s up to the investors to make as public an outcry as we can.

Additionally, you probably would have received by now a statement dated 20th June that is being circulated written by the ACI and INL (the group of Financial Advisors that are cooperating towards recovery actions). There’s a lot of boilerplate language that basically just affirms that “Yes, we are doing stuff” without actually saying what they are doing, because, anyway, they can’t. The main upshot, for our fellow victims, from where I am sitting is:

• The best course of actionable recoveries lies with the current trustees of the funds (KM & FTI)
• The ACI & INL people are there “just in case” and to apply pressure
• The LMIV website is becoming very well-known and is also being used to apply pressure
• We are still very much in the beginning stages of this saga

I still have my doubts about KM & FTI being able to find real recovery, though, to be honest, because:

• I wouldn’t want to be an employee working at KM or FTI; the environment there must be pretty insane. I can’t see them cooperating very well
• Even if they do win court cases, it’s not at all clear where they are actually going to get the pile of cash to actually pay us back (i.e. everyone is broke)
• Any solid recovery action will need support from ASIC, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and they, quite unanimously, suck

Please a reminder that this is laymen basically just guessing, but those are my observations.

If your advisor was based in Thailand, you may be interested to know that Thai SEC has issued an investor alert. You may wish to write to the emails on that site to add to the complaints.

http://www.sec.or.th/EN/Pages/InvestorAlert.aspx

You may also be interested in the comments to this LM Investment Victims post.

This is a post sent in today. Please note that I am simply “passing this on” and have no further information than what is contained below. Update: Email address fixed.

If you are one of the poor unfortunates like me who lost money last year invested with LM, in particular the “Manage Performance Fund”, don’t write it off just yet.

I made the trip up to Bangkok recently to attend an informal meeting with a few others who are fellow victims. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how we could proceed in an effort to get back some, if not all, of our investments.

One member in particular has built up a pretty strong case against LM, which impressed the rest of us to no end. It certainly gave us reason to believe there could be some light at the end of the tunnel.

Right now the idea is to build on the few of us who did meet and get together as many people as possible for a future meeting in Bangkok, where plans of action will be further explained. As the saying goes, there’s strength in numbers and that’s what we need.

You don’t have to invest any extra money and you don’t have to feel out in the cold; all we need is your support.

If you would like to join the next meeting scheduled for sometime in June in Bangkok, as we seek to find a solution, please contact me at ricky105@loxinfo.co.th