In what has to be one of Crowdcube's worst ever investment shenanigans, ex Ethos Global, ex Ethos London England, soon to be ex Soma(?), have postponed their opening launch party in London. The announcement was made today, the party was tomorrow.
It's no surprise really. The management of Soma are the same two from Ethos, who took lots of money of lots of Crowdcube investors and were then forced into liquidation by the Court. The results have not yet been filed. We flagged this all up here.
The funds from Ethos seem to have been used to fund the newco. Its all very messy and must have been planned well before they pitched on Crowdcube. Lets hope the liquidator has a mind to find the facts and not do the usual sweeping under the carpet job. All this phoenix needs is a strong fire extinguisher.
So now what am I going to do this Saturday - they havent exactly given me much time to re arrange my diary. I think a trip to the beach at Antibes is called for - Jester, get my jet ready!
Dear Rob Murray Brown,
ReplyDeletewe are one of the 350 individuals who invested in Ethos Global through Crowdcube. After a lot of investigation, we have independently reached the same conclusion as you - the whole Ethos/Soma drama seems like a typical case of asset stripping by bankruptcy! Most of the Ethos investors are probably not even aware that they have been robbed. Several months after the bankruptcy of Ethos, the directors of Ethos offered the investors common Soma shares, which is an inferior class of shares that do not get a dividend, and in an event of exit, do not get pay back until all of the preferential shareholders are paid back. Guess who have the preferential shares? The two directors and their little committee! Normally, individuals or organizations that invest money in a company get preferential shares; people who invest by putting in their time, effort and technology get only common shares. Somehow Ethos/Soma got this 180 degree wrong! To make it a proper day time robbery, the directors and their committee awarded themselves 42 millions Ethos shares; while the 350 investors got 7 millions collectively. Don't know the share numbers for Soma yet but it won't be pretty, for the investors.
You are clearly very knowledgeable in this field; I hope other Ethos investors could read your blogs and see what they have got themselves in. Question for you is - what can we do at this point to recover our stolen money? Any suggestion is very much appreciated.
to Anon who posted as a shareholder in Ethos today. Sorry cant put your comment up as its full of things which we cant prove - yet. Please get in touch directly with me on rob@ecfsolutions.co.uk to discuss options and your experience. Once i have verified your story then we can look at writing another piece and they do read them! This case seems to have fraud written all over it but we cant say that yet.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the Ethos Global asset that is the (part) owned Pearl Close address? It was collateral for the initial bank loan, and as Theo had moved to his new location in London, ownership and financing is likely to be unclear. Depending on which entity is / were doing the loan / rent / mortgage payments and to whom... (plus tax issues for the salary / rent of the staff who lived there)
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