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Monday 5 December 2016

More Horlicks anyone? SUPERWOMAN crashes.


The Glentham Fund saga roles on. It might one day become a film produced by Derby St.


We helped with the piece in the Times tomorrow - today now as we promised to hold this post back.

Someone here is taking the P and it aint us.

We cant think of another situation where you could take £400k off investors on an FCA regulated site, spend it, promise to provide another £250k and not deliver and end up a with a promised $250m fund that has precisely nothing in it.

Well we cant think of a legal situation anyway.

Hats off to all involved for legally ripping off 569 investors. Nice. We can hardly wait to see what Horlick does next.

The only piece of good news is that thanks in large part to the work we do here, Horlick was unable to get away with this sham. Seedrs are, belatedly and only because of pressure from us (see here), being forced to chase her for the money.

According to Jeff Lynne, Seedrs CEO, Horlick will be selling an asset to cover the missing money. But in a strange quirk, he states the asset is not very liquid, so she has been given until March 2017 to cash up. Well she has already had 12 months and has done nothing  - apart from spend all her shareholders' investment.

In a move that wouldnt go amiss in Crowdcube's office, Lynne, who was put on the spot this week by the Times, has issued his version of events to Crowdfund Insider, which is essentially the mouthpiece of the pro Equity Crowdfunding 'No matter what they get up to' faction - here. Its hard to make this farce look good, but they give it a go. Just by way of illustration this is how they describe Horlick in the opening paragraph - ''a renowned investment manager, film producer and CEO of Money &Co''. Really? Have you seen 'In The Blood', the accounts for Money&Co or the Glentham Fund? Infamous maybe.

Read this if you want to see Nicola's PRing machine in action - http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/news/nicola-horlick-wins-inaugural-champion-of-change-award/a821092 or this if you like one star film reviews http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/in-the-blood-2014

The CFI piece goes on to conclude -

While it is not clear yet as to how the 569 investors will make out some progress is better than none at all.
Investing in early stage companies comes with few guarantees regardless of who is at the helm. While we hope this one works out for all investors it is a cautioning reminder of the intrinsic risk involved.
Is that really the conclusion we take from this? Surely the conclusion is dont believe a bloody word they tell you, whoever they are and however many times they promise and do chase up all promises using Fantasy Equity Crowdfunding to get the best results. We would love to know what progress CFI are referring to here. Read my lips......There - is - NO - Fund. Or Refund for that matter.
The same CFI journalist druelled all over Horlick in a piece he wrote about her in July 2014. Here is a Q&A that was part of the piece, which makes for interesting reading given Glentham Funds current zero position - 
Crowdfund Insider:  The share price for the 2nd round has increased from £10 to £12.  Please share the progress made at Glentham that justifies the higher valuation.
Nicola Horlick: We are a long way down the road in terms of launching the first fund, Glentham Film.  We have an anchor investor who wishes to invest $20 million when the documentation is ready.  There is no absolute guarantee that they will invest as nothing is signed, but they remain very enthusiastic.  We feel this is sufficient progress to justify increasing the share price  
$20m now that would be great. Hey how about $2m or even $2k. No? 20 cents? .................. In this post truth world, this makes for a wonderful piece of evidence for just how easy some people find it to manipulate half truths and innuendo into fact. Full article here

To top it all, Nicola was involved this year in the Crowdcube fundraising attempts of Twelve London Ltd, a newco of which she is a director. We assume it would have been difficult to use Seedrs. This was without doubt one of the worst failures ever on a crowdfunding site - we wrote it up here. In the CFI piece on her, the last Q reveals much about her relationship with the truth -

Crowdfund Insider:  You have been very busy with Money&Co., Glentham Capital, etc.  Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?
Nicola Horlick:  No! I have more than enough to be getting on with.

 Maybe the birds are finally coming home to roost.

What, we wonder, will Jeff do with his 'agreement' if/when she doesnt pay up? Seedrs will then clearly claim they have done all they could. We hear a future 'denial of responsibility' resonating from the Seedrs Pring Dept; one they will no doubt copy straight from Crowdcube's broken record.

More importantly, why after 3 years is there still no Fund?

Lots of eggy faces here.

Our advice - if you see Horlick coming over the hill ....RUN LIKE HELL.


2 comments:

  1. To be fair, Nicola Horlick is a 'Champion of Change' and deserving of the "Britain’s Business Elite" award. She has effortlessly managed to change £400,000 of investor's savings into nothing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not true as the company shares offices with some of her other companies she's managed to spread out her rental costs. That's not nothing !

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