More Bad News for Corran Investors

News: Craze for Selling Hotel Rooms Set to Subside

The cruelly severe virus Covid-19 has, by forcing governments to close hotels, restaurants, indeed all venues where people are likely to be in close proximity, made it a lot harder for over-optimistic entrepreneurs to entice investors to part with savings to purchases leases of hotel rooms.

Investors in The Corran Resort & Spa, Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, are unlikely to receive a penny of their investments back, three years after the failed property company Kayboo Ltd entered liquidation with Lisa Hogg and Robert Dymond of Wilson Field Ltd, Sheffield.

In addition, the liquidators reported his month, May 2020, that one of Kayboo’s two directors has died of Covid-19.

An investor in The Corran has told West Wales News Review that the liquidators are uncertain whether any monies will be recovered. Kayboo Ltd, and its sister company East Marsh Operational Co Ltd, should have stopped trading in 2015, when it was clear that the business was in trouble, but the directors accepted investments of a further £500,000. Large payments were made to third parties, both connected and unconnected, without evidence of work done or services rendered, but given the bankruptcies of a number of these third parties, those payments appear to have disappeared beyond the reach of creditors.

So far, only nine investors have received compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, probably because their investments were placed in pensions, which are regulated, while non-pension investments in buyer-beware property schemes are unregulated.

The liquidators are dealing with 278 claims from unsecured creditors, totalling £14.429 million. In addition, a further 151 creditors, owed £3.155 million, have not submitted claims.

The debacle at The Corran was just one of several such schemes. Northern Powerhouse Developments sold hotel room investments in Wales and England, including in the  Fourcroft Hotel on the seafront at Tenby, and has been in administration with Duff & Phelps, Manchester, since August 2019. Northern Powerhouse Developments was also behind the ambitious plans for the Afan Valley Adventure Resort in Neath Port Talbot.

More recent still, a small Essex company called Sterling Woodrow Ltd acquired the Stradey Park Hotel, Llanelli, from its retiring proprietors, raising money from investors by selling off interests in individual hotel rooms.

The long-term repercussions of Covid-19, at least until an effective vaccine is developed, are likely to include a reluctance to stay in hotels or to eat in busy restaurants, so once they are allowed to reopen, hotels will face an uphill task to achieve profitability, and investors in hotels will need bucket-loads of patience.

The search terms Corran, Northern Powerhouse Developments, Afan Valley and Stradey Park will bring up past articles on these topics.

PDR

 

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News: Liquidators’ Tough Task to Track Millions Lost in Unregulated Corran Investment Scheme

The BBC’s Rip Off Britain programme warns viewers to beware of unregulated investments — unless they can afford to lose everything they put in.

Hundreds of investors in hotel rooms at The Corran Hotel, Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, are unlikely to see their money back. Liquidators  Robert Dymond and Lisa Hogg, of Wilson Field Ltd in Sheffield, in their progress report dated May 20th 2019 and lodged with Companies House, have received claims from 439 unsecured creditors totalling £14,429,005 (and 09p).

Robert Dymond reported that he had yet to receive claims from 162 creditors whose debts total £3,413,315 “as per the company’s statement of affairs”. ‘The company’ in this case is property firm Kayboo Ltd, in liquidation alongside East Marsh Operational Co Ltd, which ran the hotel business.

The liquidators discovered “a number of issues which required further review, including the pre-packaged sale of the business, the dissemination of funds, potential mis-selling of the investments and failure to register the property titles at the Land Registry as well as a number of payments to connected and unconnected parties”.

Claims of £1,371,589.74 and £520,700 have been submitted by the liquidators to the bankruptcy proceedings of “connected individuals” who received payments “that were deemed not legitimate business expenditure”.

“A number of connected parties and individuals” explained that the reason they received funds was “because the Companies [Kayboo and East Marsh Operational Co] were experiencing difficulties with their bank due to anti-money laundering regulations and the account being frozen. In order for the business to continue operating the directors claim that they had to transfer the funds either to themselves or connected parties to process the funds on behalf of the company.”

Will any monies will be recovered? “At the present moment it is uncertain whether there will be sufficient funds to make a distribution to any class of creditors,” the liquidators state.

The BBC1 programme Rip Off Britain (broadcast on January 9th 2019, repeated July 17th 2019) featured Dexter Jeffrey, a disappointed investor in The Corran, and emphasized the risks of this and other unregulated investments.

The Corran Hotel, trading as The Corran Resort and Spa, is under new ownership.