Stewart Ford's Keydata excuses

I thought Eric Collard was PWC not KPMG?

Well - what can one say about all this? Gobsmacked comes immediately to mind.

Just one example of self-justifying balderdash ( amongst many such examples in this Hans Christian Andersen/Jack Irvine version of events):

‘I would have liked to take the place of all the bondholders in SLS Capital. If I’m some kind of crook why would I do that?’

Answer: Because you were busy pulling in a further £350M of sucker's savings via your new Lifemark company - and you had not finished filling your hidden offshore coffers with our money. So you covered up your little £100M problem to keep the cash flowing in your direction until it was stopped by the FSA in June 2009. Is that a credible answer to your question?

Eric Collard works for KPMG - the administrators of Lifemark (one of Ford's offshore companies). PWC are the admistrators of Keydata (one of Ford's UK companies) We have administrators all over the place. Pity nothing useful seems to be happening at all. And where is the SFO in all this?

Stewart, excellent news that blue chip lawyers & advisers vouched for Elias & SLS. Presumeably you will be suing them for misrepresentation & getting our money back that way. I am sure if you check your due diligence file it will all be there. After all it is your reputation & our money that is at stake.

More of the same from the PR machine...

On the Lifemark subject...

So, who do we trust?...... Eric Collard of KPMG (you know - the company, such experts in this field that SF used their name in vain in the SIB brochures), who actually have access to the current state of affairs and know how much money is ACTUALLY in the bank to pay the Lifemark premiums or SF......

I think there are several thousand people going with EC here!

Stewart Ford hasn’t said anything, nor submitted himself for direct interview – either by journalists or the regulator.

All this ‘snow job’ has been disseminated by his PR agency and will due respect to PR agencies I would sooner believe Mystic Meg.

The mere mention of the fact that he has been advised by his lawyers not to speak ion public says volumes.

If he is as pure as he says than I would have expected him not only to do just that (speak in public) but to do it from within these shores.

As I have said before – why haven’t extradition proceedings been instituted?

Ford says he didn't tell anyone about the £100M of our savings he had lost in Luxembourg because he wanted to rescue all our lost SLS-based savings for us by replacing the stolen Life Policies with some he could acquire cheap. He calls it his "mirror" solution. Don't think he was intending to tell anyone about this cunning plan.

"I could acquire a portfolio worth £200 or £300 million for £18 million,’ said Ford."

So there we have it. The Mad Hatter school of Wonderland Life Settlements in a nutshell.

Stewart Ford's formula for running a successful Life Settlements portfolio - You pay £18M for a some bits of paper with some big numbers written on them and then you pretend it's "worth" £300M and hope no one will notice that this is, in fact, a complete fantasy "valuation".

You see - they were not "worth" anything like that fantasy figure at all, were they Mr. Ford?

What they were actually worth in the normal straightforward world we mortals live in is what you can sell them for. Which might possibly be somewhere around what you paid for them? - if you are lucky. And also if you haven't inflated even that small figure with phantom costs and fees and commissions which have all disappeared down a black hole before your can say "white rabbits".

On this same formula the $1.3B which Mr. Ford has recently told us the Lifemark assets are "worth" (using my real world definition) works out at about $78M

What do you think a Liquidator will get if the Lifemark portfolio has to be sold?

Clue: If it was £350M ($500M) we would not have a problem at all - we could all have our money back and forget we ever heard of Mr. Ford. and his smoke and mirrors fantasy land. If it's $78M..... possibly another spate of FSCS levies coming up? ( We " victims" hope so - but who will pay?).

Harry:

I believe he wanders in and out of the UK at will - and has indeed been seen (it is alledged) in direct contact with journalists in London quite recently.

I wish they would ask a few more awkward questions rather than just provide a platform for self-justification and fairy tales

Don't know if that makes you feel any better - or, like me - you might find it makes you even more angry.

I wonder if this man could clear up the confusion surrounding the FSCS declaration that his firm was involved in 'intermediation' when the rest of mankind thought it was a 'fund manager'?

After he has done us that favour he is welcome to go away and leave the industry well alone.

Advisors who recommend these types of funds do not understand them so should not recommend them to clients.-full stop.

To denigrate serious disclosures, whether believed in whole or in part, with allusions to 'fairy tales, smoke and mirrors', etc., is demeaning. It surely would be in everyone's best interests to let Ford explain in detail his side of the story so that an un-biased and valuable principle is not lost. That of free speach and common justice.

Chay,

It is not a story, it is fact...Keydata fradulently marketed products to UK consumers...The rest of the ugly stuff appeared when the tide went out.

Sorry chay,

Just trying to bring a little light humour into the lives of 30,000 UK savers (mostly fellow pensioners who don't get out much these days) who Stewart Ford aimed his marketing at.

You see we have lost our income and our savings.

And Stewart Ford and his board of directors awarded themselves an awful lot of our money through various tricky mechanisms when they knew the business they were running had already lost £100M of our savings, and they knew they had all sorts of other fundamental problems (like selling lots of ISAs to us which they knew full well could never ever have possibly been ISAs).

We wonder, when we wake up with this nightmare at 3am, where the common justice might be for us. But we do have our free speech at the moment.. So we will use it - if that's OK with you.

Did you know there were misreprentations in the marketing material which we all read so carefully? Of course you do..

Lots of bitter comments here - one can understand with peoples losses that they need an outlet. More importantly there is some interesting factual points here that suggest Ford is not the devil that everyone wishes him to be, and, in fact has lost more than anyone else through Elias and the FSA being out of line. In the end Ford operated in the city environment which encourages profit and success. The Keydata Investors and intermediaries were happy with their income and returns (prior to the administration) and, I suspect, would not have cared at all if Ford interests were taking fees for bringing a successful product to market (which it was on the basis of its sales and suggested return).

Aside from that - has anyone looked up on CIB Partners? I believe from the look of their website they are a UK regulated business.

I think it unfair to assume to much in the light of recent disclosures, I would not be at all suprised to find the inept FSA pursuing a golden pig for the expected fine.

The suprise would be that they could identify a one. I don't begrudge anybody a profit and I believe the scope hear was great for profit, I do however wonder if the allegded corrective actions would have continued and if they would have been enough.

I do feel for those caught up in it, most of whom have acted in good faith, action is required and I feel not enough is being done to protect the investor.

Peter Hilton says:

"Stewart Ford and his board of directors awarded themselves an awful lot of our money through various tricky mechanisms when they knew the business they were running had already lost £100M of our savings"

What utter rubbish.

Like a lot of what Mr Hilton has been saying this is the groundless, scattergun approach of someone who has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

Mr Hilton - a lot of people, including yourself apparently, are understandably very upset about losing money but you don't help matters by fixing on a handy scapegoat and abusing him until you are red in the face whenever he puts his head above the parapet to explain himself.

Do us all a favour - give the knee-jerk abuse a rest and just stick to the facts in future.

PWC is not a free service either and I bet they get thiers before you get yours it stinks.

Anon 3

So what do you know that is self evident that Peter Hilton has wrong? And while we are at it why do you find it necessary to be Anonymous?

Your pearls of wisdom would carry so much more weight if we knew who you were. I'm certainly intrigued by a defender of Mr. Ford. You must admit you are hardly in the majority.

Harry - just to pick up on your previous point re Fords lawyers.

Anyone with legal or litigation experience knows that in this domain Ford cannot be expected to speak until he has seen the FSA report (not published), and has a chance to respond to any direct allegations.

Peter Hilton may not be so wise with his grandiose statements.

This is a country of justice and a legal system where people are supposedly innocent until proven guilty. You and Hilton want a trial by media and are just trying to find someone to blame for your losses.

Oh dear. I seem to be getting under someone's skin . Could it be a £2M/year salary plus bonuses and £4M through the back door and £40M commission super innovator savings fund owner/manager city type or would it be his multiple spinning super dooper mouthpiece(s) talking here? or perhaps I've just upset the Mad Hatter?

Funny - same thing happened on the Keydata Victim's website last week. Lots of new " names" registered and then piled in immediately and started to sing the praises of the innocent Stewart Ford. And they even tried to ridicule me there too.. Now, when was Media House appointed?

Spin. perhaps? They are not very good at it was the conclusion. . Pretty crude, I thought.

Quote: (July 2009)The three directors of Keydata Investment Services paid themselves £7.8 million in the last two years and the salary of the highest paid Keydata director jumped to just under £2 million for the year ending September 2008 from £240,000 in 2005. Wow - they were doing a really good job weren't they?

Anony- mouse 2 : Not bitter - too old for that sort of negativity - but very, very angry indeed.

Anon 2

No I haven't lost any money. As not one who has been a lifetime member of the financial services community I have retained my hearty dislike for what I term the cowboys and as far as I'm concerned Mr Ford falls into that category.

1. By the company he has kept.

2. By the fact that he lives in an offshore tax haven - which other CEO of a product provider does that?

3. That these commissions and fees were hardly transparent and that there are a host of fancy offshore trusts in some very flaky locations.

Financial services have always had its fair share of spivs from Deaves, Clowes and Levitt to the suspects of today. At least in other areas those who suffer loss can usually write it off against tax in a commercial environment. Losing money as a result of chicanery or sharp practice of those who are trying to save is a hanging offence in my book.

Sure I agree you don’t hang a man before the trial, but this whole thing stinks like a barrel of rotten fish and a blind man can see that Mr. Ford is hardly as white as the driven snow. What we need is the trial – and quick. Yes, the FSA is as ever a bumbling along at a pace which makes a tortoise look like an Olympic sprinter and yes it is very understandable that people like Peter Hilton are furious and so should everyone in financial services. This episode reflects badly on all of us and that is due in no small part to the failings of Mr. Ford. He seems to be set for life if the SFO and the FSA don’t have a case, while too many people have lost significant portions of their hard won assets. And that more than anything is what hacks me off.

I hope that puts a different light on it for you.

Harry,

I take your points about people being angry etc......... I am furious ! but what appears to be emerging here, is another side to the story as there always is ! if we focus only on the alleged wrong doings of the people @ keydata we may be missing out on what really did go on and who is to blame.........

GRANT

We are all furious, but you could be right there. One sided arguments are a waste of time and are, in my experience of the law, utterly pointless. There does seem to be facts and figures still to be brought to the public's attention and when they are this fiasco may be seen in a different light. As for the FSA being slow - what's new? Slow witted might be nearer the truth! I am slowly coming to the opinion that they might have been instrumental to a certain degree in creating some of the difficulties we now find ourselves in.