Last year, a British investment firm called London Capital & Finance went belly-up, leaving its mostly elderly investors in a €237 million hole. Many of those investors were sold on the bond shop by one John Russell-Murphy. But hawking LCF products to the vulnerable was only Russell-Murphy’s side gig: In 2015, he founded another high-yield debt shop with a peer of the realm. Russell-Murphy only stuck around MJS for a year, but, uh, guess what?
MJS stopped paying promised dividends on its bonds and collapsed into liquidation last year…. The court appointed liquidator’s progress report just published reveals that the £35 million of assets MJS’s director Shaun Prince claimed were in the company when the liquidation was started was actually more like £7 million.
It says that the company’s affairs are being investigated by Thames Valley Police, and that the liquidator and his staff have been assisting with their investigations.
Police investigate collapsed bond firm MJS, launched with LibDem peer’s backing [Evening Standard]