Keydata plot thickens as PwC discovers a 103m black hole
ADMINISTRATORS of failed structured product firm Keydata have unearthed a £103m black hole in its assets, as it emerged two mysterious groups it was trading with have vanished along with customers’ money.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has involved the Serious Fraud Office as it believes the funds may have been “misappropriated”.
PwC is trying to ascertain why for some time Keydata has been paying income on 5,740 clients’ products itself, rather than taking it from the
Luxembourg-domiciled vehicle SLS Capital and a similar group called Hometrack.
They were holding on to the client assets and should have been providing Keydata with incomes, but are now nowhere to be found.
PwC is grilling Keydata’s former bosses but is still not sure why the group was paying the incomes itself.
In all, around 42,580 investors with assets worth £645m now have missing assets or tax confusion, and PwC has halted income payments and redemptions for many of them.
Keydata was founded in 1997 by Stewart Ford, who is now a Geneva resident but is still thought to be the group’s majority owner.