Daily Mail - 28.08.2019

Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 28, 2019 Page 35

Editor: VICTORIA BISCHOFF

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk

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I

t WAS the greatest shock of my
life. Last week I came home from
a lovely two-week holiday in Ulster
and Wales to find my £111,000
savings had gone missing.
I knew going away on holiday was expen-
sive these days — but not that expensive.
When I got through my front door on the
Monday night, I waded through the pile of
post: magazines, invitations, junk mail — and
a letter from Leonard Curtis Business Rescue
& Recovery.
the blood drained from my face as I read
the opening words in capital letters: ‘SVS
Securities PLC (in special administration)’.
SVS Securities was the online share-broker
I’d been using to buy shares with my savings
for a decade. Some 13,500 clients, with a total
of £60 million in investments, were now in the
same deeply perilous boat as me.
the letter went on to say SVS was a failed
investment firm and that, ‘in view of the
financial and operational position of the
company on August 2, 2019’, the Board
resolved to put the company into special
administration. On August 5, a court placed
the company in special administration.
More importantly, what about my money?
‘Our priority is to facilitate an orderly and
coordinated return of client money and
custom assets to rightful clients to the fullest
extent possible,’ the letter said.
to the fullest extent possible! that
could mean £111,000 or it could mean
nought pounds.
this financial meltdown had happened a
fortnight before I read that heart-stopping
letter — and yet I was told nothing about it
as I played golf in County Down and swam
in Pembrokeshire.
I immediately tried to ring the helpline
number given in the letter but — it being
9.30pm — there was no one there.
I rushed to my computer and the SVS
website. It had been frozen, with a chilling
message on the screen from Leonard
Curtis, saying that SVS Securities PLC was in
special administration.
this meant I didn’t even know how much of
my money was being held by the company.

L

Ike many people, I rely so much on
online banking that I always just log
on to get a statement rather than
keeping paper records. the only
reference to the £111,000 was a note I’d scrib-
bled down in my diary a few months ago.
I may well have more in the account thanks
to dividends that have been added since —
and any stock market gains.
Needless to say, I’ve had no way of selling
the shares in the past fortnight as the stock
market has tumbled.
I had a near-sleepless night, tossing and
turning as I thought about the years spent
earning that money and the very generous
gifts from my family that had added to it —
and thinking how on earth it could be
possible for a company to lose it.
SVS had seemed a respectable firm, with an
address in the City of London, happily
trading since 2002.
they acted as a broker — someone who

By Harry

Mount

When HARRY

MOUNT got

back from

holiday he

found his share

dealing service

had hit the

skids... leaving

thousands like

him facing ruin

Letter that

told me...

MY LIFE

SAVINGS

HAD GONE

MISSING

buys and sells shares on your
behalf — and a fund manager.
I found SVS when searching
online for a firm with low fees.
there are lots of these online
brokers, offering much lower
commissions on share transactions
than the old-fashioned, pre-

internet stockbrokers. I had never

used SVS as a fund manager,

although, to begin with, I did get

calls suggesting I should buy the

company’s recommendations — all

of which I refused to do.

Instead, I only ever used SVS to

buy and sell shares — and highly

respectable, blue-chip shares at

that. Because the SVS website is

still frozen, I can’t get a rundown

of those shares but I know

my holdings were in leading

companies such as Shell,

GlaxoSmithkline, BAt, BAe

and easyJet. In other words,

companies that are in no danger of

going into sudden administration

like SVS. I thought I had

been hyper-cautious.

this wasn’t like this year’s Neil

Woodford disaster where the

former genius sharepicker started

making disastrous choices for his

funds and then denied his clients

access to their money as their

EDITOR OF THE OLDIE

Money Mail