The Premier Balanced Fund was described as an “experienced investor fund”, restricting it to people capable of understanding the risks, but they needed a lender who could come up with 40 million Euros to invest in their fund.
SLM Funding Nº1 Limited won the tender process: it was selected by the Premier Group (Isle of Man) Ltd. to find those 40 million Euros, an order they carried out efficiently: Aareal Bank was convinced to pool resources, some say Rothschild too…
But there was an added element in the form of bricks and mortar: approximately 100 Spanish properties would be used as collateral to ensure that, if the investments went down, 200-odd British pensioners could be made responsible of footing the bill.
The “experienced investor fund” is now probably worth less than half and the ex- mariners, ex-policemen, house wives and other Spain-based retirees who were instilled with the Fear of God with the Spanish Inheritance Tax -and fell for the scam- have their properties, and lives, bogged down.
Perverse Nicky Flux, loyal till death to SLM, keeps sending her monthly letter out to pensioners…letters coming from a company that would disgrace any Nigerian 419 business.
Erva’s comments on the previous post, appertains to this post as well. It is interesting to note that Premier Balanced Fund Plc, was only for the Experienced Investor an not for retired people who were talked out of their properties to invest in this fund. This whole matter reeks of fraud, collusion and predatory lending. It was not meant for retire individuals who would not be in a position to repay the mortgage loan should it go “belly up”. Who in their right minds would risk everything they had worked so hard to achieve for their retirement, in a mindless and fraudulent scheme, including their home. Is there any of our members who were told this.
We invested with SLM. We were told that after five years we would receive a bonus pay out plus an annual income. No comment was ever made of the risk involved. The inducement was based heavily on negating IHT and we were given documents showing how our IHT would be dramatically reduced and how the money would grow over 5 to 10 years. We were totally sucked in and it was nothing but a conn to earn the salesman vast amounts of commission.
I think this lot went to the same selling classes as the lot from Landsbanki.Lu Same story same result. Interesting to note that in France they were never licenced to operate as a bank or to offer these highly toxic investment as was confirmed by the Bank of France (copy letter on our Facebook and Web Site). Well done on ERVA keep up the fight we are all with you.
Neil, please see our comments on the previous post.
Hundreds more British pensioners living in Spain were also “persuaded” to transfer their life savings directly into the bank account of “Premier´s Low Risk Fund” – another fund designed for “Experienced Investors” only” —
Premier imported the product into Spain without proper permit from the Spanish regulatory authority, used the words “Low Risk” to describe a fund structure which is generally accepted to be “high risk”, Failed to disclose an exit penalty (MVA) unlimited in amount/duration in either the Fund´s prospectus or other promotion/advertising brochures, Licenced the Fund for retail sale to totally unqualified “distributors” – who the Fund described as “professional” investment advisors. Failed due diligence by allowing hundreds of financially inexperience pensioners to transfer their life savings to an “Experienced Investor Fund”.
The pensioners lost considerable sums of money and were forced to pay a 28% “fee” to obtain the return of their savings!