Here’s a rare chance for Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation visitors to see their freeholder Vincent Tchenguiz speak courtesy of Bloomberg …
Things might seem tough for Vincent Tchenguiz right now, with Lloyds Bank poised to pitch a fifth of his freehold portfolio into administration (subject to a court hearing this week).
Plus there’s his and his brother Robert’s demand for £300 million compo owing to his arrest on mistaken evidence in March 2011.
You can view here
Highlights include: “They wanted to get some scalps,” says Tchenguiz, 57. “And now I’m going to butcher them.”
The accompanying feature article describes how Tchenguiz started at Shearson Lehman Brothers and then went into the property business, buying office blocks in Croydon occupied by the Department of the Environment. The rental income was then sold on for a far higher sum.
The article is not the most critical piece of journalism, but is a decent profile published on Tchenguiz.
Related posts:
Cabinet minister condemns ‘monstrous’ companies as prime riverside site ousts freeholder
Freeholder’s barrister Justin Bates named in Parliament. And Benjamin Mire. And Tchenguiz. And Yianis. And Israel Moskovitz …
The Guardian money editor wades into leasehold
What happens if the managing agent or freeholder goes bust?
This comes across more as a Tchenguiz sales pitch to sell the property portfolio than anything else.
I understand his wish to blame all his troubles on the action of the SFO.
According to information i have received, part of his defence to the Lloyds attempt to place a substantial part of his portfolio into administration is that “since loans and interest payments began defaulting in 2009, why have Lloyds decided to act now?”
Perhaps it is because Lloyds believe the assets meant to secure the loans are vastly overvalued, the income used to pay interest charges has diminished and there is very little prospect of recovering their loans? it could be that by putting the portfolio into administration, Lloyds believe that should Tchenguiz win his case any financial award will be paid to the administrators and not Tchenguiz?
I could have the name slightly wrong, but i do seem to recall a company Sterling Assets UK, which was set up to build a fund to purchase property portfolios. I understand that was also part of the Tchenguiz empire. That company collapsed in 2010.
The article states “With Vincent’s ground-rent portfolio in receivership, he lost his lease income.”
This did NOT happen VT slickly switched his portfolio into another company and thus continued to receive his lease income at that time!! How was he allowed to get away with this?
Boggle
From the film Grease TELL ME MORE, TEL ME MORE.
Chas
What went into receivership and was then sold was Peverel, the managing agent (including Consort and OM Property Management). The freeholding companies (including Proxima, Fairhold) carried on collecting ground rent as usual. The ground rent portfolio is not in receivership… yet, and was not switched to another company.
Behold the anger of “the butcher”, the man who imposed unfair exit fees on pensioners in leasehold retirement properties, who used his freeholds to make extra fees by any means: kickbacks, “contributions to overhead”, inflated insurance commissions, management fees based on overall levels of expenditure (a clear conflict of interest), jobs knocked down to connected companies etc.
Fairhold? Or Sleazehold?
Weep not for this rapacious capitalist. He invested in Bernie Madoff and is headed in the same direction: court.
I weep not.
I think its really the Banks that got butchered when they got too close to the Tchenguiz Bros.
1. Merryl Lynch the US Bank which help to raise £££Mil for VT and had to be saved by Bank of America.
2. Kaupthing Bank which lent £1.7Bn to R Tchenguiz and even lent £170 Mil shortly to meet RT’s margin calls from other banks before itself collapsed
3. HBOS ( actually Bank of Scotland was the lender ) lent recklessly to VT based on suspect valuations and HBOS had to be saved by LloydsTSB.
I remember reading that Kaupthing bank ( UK Branch) collapsed in Autumn 2008 and the UK depositors had to be compensated by the UK Government amounting to £2.5 Billion .
So you could say the UK Government was indirectly butchered. But does any MP understand what actually happened ??