LCF administration extended until 2024
London Capital & Finance’s (LCF) administration has been extended until 2024 to take the total process to five years.
According to the latest filings on Companies House, joint administrators Smith and Williamson and FRP Advisory said the administration of the mini-bond provider will now end on 29 January 2024. This would mean the administration process would reach five years in total.
LCF collapsed into administration in January 2019, leaving about 11,000 everyday investors in the dark about the recovery of the £237m outstanding in the portfolio.
Read more: A timeline of FSCS payments to LCF investors
The latest administration progress report in September showed that LCF administrators’ fees hit £6.2m by 29 July and were expected to reach £7.7m by the end of January.
In April last year, the joint administrators paid a dividend to over 10,000 bondholders that totalled around £6m and said bondholders would receive further dividends when more assets are realised. But they added these would likely be paid by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if the government-backed compensation scheme was operational by then.
During that month, the Treasury announced it will establish a scheme that provides 80 per cent of LCF bondholders’ initial investment up to a maximum of £68,000 and said it expected to pay around £120m in compensation to about 8,800 people in total.
Read more: Deadline extended for complaints about LCF supervision
As of 2 February, the FSCS said it had contacted 8,500 people, issuing cheques for over 11,500 bonds totalling £105m under the scheme.
The FSCS wrote to an additional 700 people about compensation from mid-December to February, has 700 more left to contact and said everyone will receive their offer by 20 April.
Separately to the scheme, the FSCS has already paid out £57.6m in redress for customers which it believes had bad advice but stopped short of offering further payments.
