Stewart Ford looks to provide Lifemark bailout package
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Keydata founder Stewart Ford has formed a consortium of Lifemark investors to propose a lending package to stop the group from collapsing.
Ford says the package - provided by his trading company Billericay and “other bondholders” - would secure the savings of the 23,000 UK investors who were placed in Lifemark bonds by Keydata. The group declined to specify the details of the package but the statement claims Lifemark requires financing of £19.5m a year to stave off collapse.
Ford says he has approached Lifemark’s provisional administrator KPMG Luxembourg to propose the package, which includes back-dated income payments to the investors.
Earlier this month hopes were dashed of a third-party deal to save Lifemark when US hedge fund CarVal walked away from talks with KPMG, as revealed by Money Marketing.
A report in this week’s Mail on Sunday suggests the FSCS is likely to deny compensation to Lifemark investors when it decides on whether it will offer compensation next month. An FSCS spokesman says no decision has been made.
Ford’s spokesman Jack Irvine says the new package puts the interests of Lifemark investors first.
He says: “There will be no immediate multi-million dollar payment out of Lifemark to third parties whose interests are not aligned with those of Lifemark investors. The consortium will include representatives of those investors to ensure that its outcome will be in their best interests.”
Irvine says the deal will provide financial support to Lifemark for the next three years to ensure it becomes self-financing and capable of paying out as originally promised to investors.
He adds: “It is just a matter of time before there will be a substantial cash surplus for investors.”
This comes after Ford announced last week that Billericay was allowing some of its life settlement holdings to be liquidated to provide emergency short-term funding for Lifemark.
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Readers' comments (6)
Evan Owen | 31 Aug 2010 10:43 am
Just get it sorted so that the long suffering investors can get their lives back on track.
Is that the FSA I see behind all this with its big stick?
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Anonymous | 31 Aug 2010 10:58 am
Stewart Ford is interested in rescuing Lifemark because he inherits the value of the portfolio when the bonds are redeemed which was estimate to be in excess of £100 million. This is all about Stewart Ford's wallet.
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Anonymous | 31 Aug 2010 11:12 am
An interesting observation Anon 1.
Perhaps the entire group of investors should become a mutual and share in the total gross IRR of the portfolio, which would seem to be a very equitable scenario, given the problems they have had to endure.
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Anonymous | 31 Aug 2010 11:42 am
What exactly does the cv of Mr. Ford say ?
Was he in the Financial Services Industry previous to Keydata? Surely this matter needs to be under the control of the FSA NOW.
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Anonymous | 31 Aug 2010 12:24 pm
Lifemark SA is a Luxembourg company and so (supposedly) outside the FSA's jurisdiction.Let's hope the FSA does no further damage to investors interests by preventing Mr Ford from providing a rescue package (as they did last year in the case of SLS)
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tonyw | 31 Aug 2010 5:10 pm
What would be really equitable would the Lifemarkers be given shares in the consortium so they could share in the profits later on. There could be B shares where investors waive the right to income & A shares for those who want to invest a further capital. The additional capital if all original investors invested woud be about 5.5% of original investment annually. i.e 19.5m divided by 350m.
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