Tag: Bob Parker

  • HOLBORN ASSETS (OR LIABILITIES?)

    This is the claim made by Holborn Assets’ CEO Bob Parker: “We are professional advisers adhering to the company’s mission which is to ensure that you get quality, independent advice and service, that your money is put in the right place at the right time and that you are treated with integrity and respect. Moreover, our unparalleled relationships with the best product providers help to assure that we make available superior investment and protection solutions for the increasingly sophisticated expatriate community we serve.”

    Let’s examine this claim in the context of Holborn victim Glynis Broadfoot.  She was given rotten advice and service in 2011 which resulted in her losing a significant portion of her final salary pension.  Thanks to Holborn Assets, her gold-plated local authority pension was put into high-risk, professional-investor only investments and she then suffered years of extreme worry and distress while she watched the value of her pension plummet.

    Far from treating Mrs. Broadfoot with “integrity and respect”, Holborn refused to help her and simply kept taking their fees from her ever shrinking pension pot.

    With Holborn recently ordered by the FCA to immediately stop DB pension transfers:

    http://www.international-adviser.com/news/1034897/holborn-assets-immediately-cease-pension-transfers

    it is now time to put Holborn clearly in the spotlight, make the complaint against them public and correct their claims of “superior investment solutions”.  For several years now I have offered Holborn CEO Bob Parker the opportunity to choose between emerging from this debacle the hero or the villain – but Parker has refused to engage.  However, Holborn’s Caleb Burgess reached out to me on LinkedIn yesterday so I am sure he will be eager to engage with me to help resolve this matter.

    Formal Complaint against Holborn Asset Management, Dubai in respect of victim Glynis Broadfoot

    Desired Outcomes:

    • Full reinstatement of original pension transfer value
    • Full refund of all fees paid to all parties
    • Interest at the same rate as would have been earned had the fund remained in the original scheme
    • Compensation for the anxiety, stress and pressure which have put at risk Mrs. Broadfoot’s health and life for the past five years

    Holborn’s Failures:

    1. False and misleading representations about the investments
    2. Mis-sale of professional-investor-only financial products which were unsuitable for a low-risk investor
    3. Undisclosed fees and commissions which were deliberately concealed
    4. Absence of integrity and professionalism
    5. Firm not licensed to provide pension and investment advice in Spain
    6. Negligent and uncooperative in dealing with the complaint for several years

    Summary:

    • Mrs. Broadfoot had been a member of the Local Government Employee Superannuation Scheme for 29 years
    • Holborn advised the transfer of pension to a QROPS with Gower Pensions, Guernsey, using estimated figures to make the transaction appear more attractive
    • Holborn did not advise Mrs. Broadfoot of the benefits of remaining in her final salary secured pension
    • Holborn informed her that the transfer value would be £195,105 – rather than the actual value of £146,376 which gave her false and misleading information about the transfer
    • Holborn subsequently admitted that the investment choices were poor and claimed  that “if there was something (they) could do to turn the clock back (they) would”
    • Holborn did not advise Mrs. Broadfoot of her initial losses and when she complained they were dismissive and assured her they were “only paper losses”
    • Holborn Assets informed her, at the height of her distress over her losses, that they “had closed the case, and would not enter into any further correspondence” 
    • Holborn did not disclose their fees of £11K which they were continuing to charge even while her pension was losing money at an alarming rate
    • Fees of £5,594 paid to Gower were not disclosed by Holborn or agreed by Mrs. Broadfoot
    • Due to negligent, inappropriate investments made by Holborn, she has lost a substantial proportion of her pension which may result in having to sell the family home and the possibility of her family having to live on government benefits
    • A Suitability report was undertaken by Holborn Assets which clearly stated: “Annual review to ensure that the underlying investment strategy is still within the member’s attitude to risk” 
    • Annual return was promised at 8% and that Mrs. Broadfoot would never lose any money

    Below is an e-mail sent from Robert Parker CEO at Holborn to staff advising them of what to state in an e-mail to Mrs. Broadfoot regarding documentation she had requested:

    From:  Bob Parker (robert@holbornassets.com)
    Sent: 26 February 2015 07:59:02
    To: Caleb Burgess (caleb.burgess@holbornassets.com)
    Cc: Simon Parker (simon@holbornassets.com); Philip Parker (philip@holbornassets.com); John Broadfoot (broadfootjf@hotmail.co.uk)

    If you have already sent transaction detail change the wording on the holding letter and resend. Something like “the attached was sent to you on xx date we are searching our archives for any further information.”

    But no transaction details were ever sent to her by Holborn.

    In summary, despite the expensive advice given to Mrs. Broadfoot by Holborn Assets, and assurances that her pension would grow at 8% per annum, she ended up losing nearly a third of her fund.   So contrary to the firm’s grandiose claims on their website, this victim’s money was put in the wrong place at the wrong time and she was treated with complete callousness and contempt.

     

  • EYE ON DUBAI – GUARDIAN WEALTH MANAGEMENT AND HOLBORN ASSETS

    EYE ON DUBAI – GUARDIAN WEALTH MANAGEMENT AND HOLBORN ASSETS

    dubai-blog-snap

    GUARDIAN WEALTH MANAGEMENT AND HOLBORN ASSETS

    A TALE OF TWO PUZZLES

    Don’t you just hate it when you see a puzzling situation and can’t quite put your finger on what is behind it?  There are two firms in Dubai that have got me thinking these past few days and I reckon the “jungle drums” in the Gulf have finally confirmed my best suspicions.

    Guardian Wealth Management and Holborn Assets: two financial advisory firms HQ’d in Dubai with clear aspirations to become leading global players, but hampered by the skeletons rattling in their respective cupboards.  Both firms have recently poached rivals’ staff in a bid to increase sales.  But both have some pretty challenging hurdles to overcome before they can be taken seriously as contenders for the status of leading, award-winning, multi-national advisers.

    My guess is that Guardian is likely to win the race, and leave Holborn struggling with its own self-inflicted albatrosses.  And the guy who will lead Guardian to victory will be former deVere managing director, Mike Coady who jumped ship from deVere to Guardian a while back.  But what was puzzling me was why would a man at the top of his profession, earning an eye-watering £250k salary and heading up the World’s biggest financial services company, take a less senior, non-executive position with a small firm which is heavily in debt to the Welsh government?

    Coady’s gone from M.D. to “chief commercial officer” (and you can imagine the chorus of snorts that title caused throughout the industry) in the blink of an eye.  A huge disaster for his c.v.?  Or a golden opportunity perhaps?  I think the answer to that question may be contained in a quote from Coady just a couple of months ago: “there is something that money can’t buy, and that is experience”.

    At the beginning of 2016, Guardian poached three of deVere’s staff and paid them nearly a quarter of a million quid in (how should I phrase this?) “bonuses” – aka “golden handshakes”.  But only a few months earlier, Guardian had been exposed as having received a GBP 850k grant from the Welsh government for a venture which promptly collapsed, and then failing to repay the grant.  So, effectively British taxpayers were paying for the very “experience” which Coady was saying money couldn’t buy.

    A “little birdie” has tipped me the nod that Coady is going to rescue Guardian’s tarnished image, by forgoing his GBP 250k annual salary for two years, and forcing the three deVere poachees – John Green, Joe Woodhouse and William Burrows – to repay the GBP 250k “bonuses” they received.  And repay the Welsh government every penny they are owed.

    Interestingly, Coady has been joined by another ship jumper: Darren Jones of Old Mutual International.  I haven’t found out whether he is also going to forgo his previous  GBP 250k salary to help speed up the repayment of the Welsh debt, but I am sure somebody in the “jungle” will tell me sooner or later.

    Alas, Holborn Assets don’t have a Mike Coady to rescue them and give them a shot at the “crown”.  Despite also recently poaching a rival firm’s staff (Finsbury Associates’ Nicholas Thompson and a team of five salesmen), Holborn can’t shake off the disgrace of their adviser Paul Reynolds, now allegedly going under a different name to hide his past.  Fined GBP 300k and banned by the FCA for a series of misdemeanours (including falsification of documents- as confirmed by the FCA in the UK), Reynolds clearly knows where the body is hidden as he remains a prominent member of Bob Parker’s team.

    Funnily enough, I ran into Reynolds in Dubai last year when I had gone to Holborn Assets’ office to see Parker – who heads up the firm.  Parker had been dodging my calls and emails for months while I had been trying to get him to agree to compensate one of his victims whose pension had been decimated by Holborn’s pension investment “advice” in Spain – a jurisdiction where they had no licences.  The poor client had spent years watching the high-risk investments Holborn had put her pension into shrink alarmingly, while she discovered the huge commissions and fees Holborn had earned out of her misfortune.

    During my wait in reception at Holborn’s Al Shafar Tower office in Dubai, Mr. Reynolds had a visitor – and we had a very nice, interesting chat – not really relevant here or now (another time perhaps).  Then Mr. Parker’s charming executive assistant Chimaa Meftah took me to a pleasant(ish) meeting room and listened patiently and sympathetically to my account of how Holborn had ruined a victim’s pension and health.  Chimaa promised that Mr. Parker would contact me as soon as he got back from South Africa.  However, I fear he may have been mistaken for a missionary as he doesn’t appear to have returned to any part of civilisation which has either telephones or internet.

    So the puzzle is solved as the clever and canny Mr. Coady clearly knows something that Bob Parker doesn’t: you can’t move forward successfully until and unless you sort out the messes and disgraces of the past.  Coady has a coherent plan for repaying the Welsh government and restoring faith in the integrity of Guardian’s advisers – after all, who would want to listen to any advice, let alone financial advice, from people who have taken bribes paid for by British taxpayers.

    Mike Coady made a resounding prediction for deVere back in October 2016: “There’s a clear and definite trend that independent bodies, agencies and organisations are increasingly recognising our (deVere’s) high quality work, advice and service – and I am confident this will gain further momentum in 2017.”

    So here’s my own prediction for 2017: in the wake of the recent resignation of Guardian’s CEO David Howell, Coady will, before long, get a promotion and a significant stake in the business.  Money may not be able to buy experience – but it sure helps clean the skeletons out of the cupboards.  Perhaps, as Mr. Coady won’t be earning any salary for the next two years, he might like to offer his consultancy services and priceless experience to Holborn Assets in his spare time?