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.