THE PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG


This blog was established to help get to the bottom of how the Collins & Bone Partnership reached the very sad situation it is now in, with its partner Liam James Collins having a bankruptcy hearing on 25th January (postponed)15th March 2012 (ditto), and finally bankrupted on 9th May 2012 (case # NEWC 1517 of 2011 BKT 3472187, Newcastle County Court, The Law Courts, The Quayside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 3LA), and David Bone Jnr declared bankrupt on 31st May (case no 100 of 2012 Wigan County Court). The partnership used the following addresses:

25 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2 H9HW, UK

Eastern Villa, Station Rd. North, Forest Hall, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE12 9AE (owned by Liam Collin's parents, and now up for sale)

There are 3 specific goals of this blog:

• To find out what happened to the 1m+ GBP monies that C&B raised via PNs in late 2009, 2010 & 2011. I am excluding PNs issued to ex-CBS investors, but that said, this blog will be of interest to ex-CBS investors, and there is information that needs to be obtained from this set of investors wrt when PNs were issued to them, and their duration.

• To determine what, if any, criminal charges should be brought against the partners.

• To warn other investors off doing any business with the partners, their equally inept/unscrupulous extended family members, and supportive cohorts.

When you look at the PNs, there are no specific statements on the documents that specify how the monies were to be used - how you believed they were to be used is based on whatever e-mail/phone call foreplay you had beforehand with Liam Collins. That is why it is so important that the following information is collated for this category of C&B investors on an individual basis:

1) What did you believe you were investing in, and what was your basis for believing this?
2) What investment risks were you informed of?
3) What was your understanding of the purpose to which PN monies could be put?
4) What brochures and documents were you furnished with as prt of your due diligence?
5) What due diligence did you do?
This blog is being operated completely separate to Sally & Jasmine's blog (http://collins-bone-investors.blogspot.com), although we share the common goal of getting to the bottom of this mess in a professional manner. If you don't want to post anything on the blog in person, you can send an e-mail to me at lastdoghome@gmail.com - information conveyed in any such e-mails will only be posted on the blog on your behalf after any editting/your specific consent.


Ewart (The Editor)



Saturday 11 February 2012

Were you Investing In The Collateral or PN Model?

Liam Collins has been trying to distance himself from the Collateral model for sub-100k investments, stating instead that what was being invested in was the C&B PN model. When I made my PN investments back in April 2010, I was furnished only with C&G brochures (David Bone himself was puzzled as to why these had been sent when I talked with him on 31/2/2012), and the Collateral brochure.

Also interesting is that in an e-mail from Liam Collins on 8/2/2012, he made the statement:


    "They (FSA) had pulled 4 things (1) the use of pooling
      investors cash, (2) the syndicate model as it did this, (3) the
      Collateral C&G model 100k plus and (4) the soliciting of PNs."

Note that there is no mention of Collateral C&B model sub-100k!!!! Indeed, I already have an e-mail from an investor in which Liam Collins stipulates that what they invested in was the C&B PN model, even though they were never sent the brochure for this model ... they were sent the C&B Collateral brochure, just like me.

Can C&B investors (excluding ex-CBS investors), there should be some 28 of you, who took out PNs in late 2009, 2010 and 2011 reply to The Editor (lastdoghome@gmail.com) or to the blog and indicate whether they believed they were investing in the PN model or the Collateral model. If someone could send me a copy of the PN brochure that would be appreciated too, as I of course don't have a copy!

The following is an e-mail dialogue I had with Liam Collins on 8/2/2012:

[ewart]: (1) C&B did not tell investors in the Collateral model that their monies would be placed in a common bank account, and that thereafter there monies would be used however C&B saw fit, (2) with no tracking of these monies to the investment model in which they were to have been invesed in. Instead you told investors that the investment was risk free.
 
[liam]: (1) Correct but for those who asked they were told. You cannot put everything in a brochure we realised that after our CBS brochure was 76 pages long! We took advice and stripped it down knowing people would do their own due diligence. (2) No this is where you are wrong you are mixing the collateral 100k investment with yours. The 100k upwards with a first charge oven asset is risk free. Risk free is not a term I would ever use again in this industry.
 
[ewart]:  David (Bone Jnr), in my conversation with him on 31/1/2012, described the risks associated with the PNs at the time they were taken out as "zero, as near zero as an investment can be", and that mirrors exactly my recollection of phone calls I had with you prior to taking out my PNs, and that in my e-mail request to you for an assessment of the risks associated with the PNs, you did not provide any except some C&G brochures (which David was puzzled as to why you had even sent these), and a Collateral brochure that specified no risks whatsoever. 
 
You brought up the mis-selling, so lets just take a look at that. The Collateral model was a collective investment scheme. 


[liam]: Wrong  we took QC advice to ensure this was not but as it was new and a new way of doing things the FSA said it is a grey area so to be sure take advertising down.

[ewart]:  I have sent you copies of all the e-mails relating to my due diligence and requested you to phone me to discuss these (in fact I have done this twice), but you have not done so ... in the end I had to chase down David (Bone Jnr) to confirm that my investment was indeed in the Collateral model, and that there had been a miscommunication in not telling me about the FSA pulling the plug on the model.

[liam]: Where the mistakes are is that our original brochure for C&B PNs was called the C&B PN brochure and most people who invested invested with this brochure. It was nowhere near as slick looking and so we took the C&G 100k collateral product and attempted to re skin it as the C&B PN brochure but we failed to take out the line on page 2 where it says the money will be used directly for purchase renovation and sale. This was true for C&G but was wishful thinking for C&B unfortunately.


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