A group of former Premier League footballers say they lost tens of millions of pounds because of their financial advisers.
Danny Murphy, Michael Thomas and Rod Wallace are part of the V11 campaign group, which comprises 11 footballers who invested with Kingsbridge Asset Management in the 1990s and 2000s.
Football's Financial Shame: The Story of the V11 shows how coming together as a team helped the group survive and gave them the conviction to go public. It will air on BBC Two and the BBC iPlayer on Tuesday, 2 September from 21:00 BST.
Comments
Know if he lost either £4m or £5m according to the news interview today.
I cite that because it highlights the naivety of these footballers in my opinion. Whether they were wronged or greedy I don’t know.
I am not a Danny Murphy apologist. If it were Scott Parker on the other hand......
Tax evasion is illegal.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15056859/Premier-League-players-200-footballers-financial-advisers.html
Perhaps also worth noting that unregulated investments are really only marketable to "certified high net worth individuals" or "certified sophisticated investors". The former are people with earnings in excess of £100k pa or net assets of 250k. The later are individuals with experience of investing in off-market products. Clearly you can see that some premier league footballers would feel all warm and fuzzy having been described as a HNWI or CSI.
The irony here of course is that signing up to be a certified HNWI or CSI and therefore immediately removing vast layers of financial protection otherwise available to you kind of indicates that you are an idiot rather than a sophisticated investor! A bit of a dichotomy.
Many years ago I used to investigate dodgy financial schemes. There are two over-riding themes that the investors tell you when you interview them. First the person that took their money "seemed like such a nice guy" (it's usually a guy) and I'd often brutally remind them that they wouldn't have given money to an obnoxious git would they? Second, they admitted that they knew all about "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" but that they got greedy.
Some interesting stuff here about it all. https://citywire.com/new-model-adviser/news/football-films-and-finance-how-two-ifas-hit-the-headlines/a858394
Regardless, how anyone can take pleasure in seeing the depression and trauma this has caused to these players is beyond me. Rod Wallace and his Mrs didn’t even sign many of the investment instructions they were forged over 20 times.
What I don’t understand however is how anyone who has more than a hundred thousand to invest, does so in one investment plan.
’Spread your bets’
’Don’t put all your eggs in one basket'
You’ve only had to just hear one of these expressions to know better. I myself feel that I was a bit scammed by a company that persuaded me after Brexit that their fund was better than having pension plans left in the UK. After 8 years it’s performed badly and the fees are extortionate so I’m going to have to, at cost, move it again. I would never have put everything I have into it, however good it sounded at the time.
These guys are losing their homes! Why on earth did they put everything into this investment? They had millions to spread out.
In the interview he stated that the first bit of advice he got from someone at Liverpool when signing his first Liverpool contract, was not to take any financial advice from the barrage of lepers that will now hound him.
He then went on to say a few weeks later he was walking past a flat for sale in Chester or somewhere like that saw a flat for sale and went in and bought it. Directly no mortgage.
I’ve always been wary of IFA’s and probably explains why I’m so risk averse with my money despite being heavily involved in ‘risk’ in my daily job (not my own money I suppose)
Undoubtedly these guys including our own assistant manager got duped by these individuals and it happens all the time at a much lower level than ex premier league footballers still making plenty of money from the game, but good on them for taking on the system
my accountant/ financial adviser said to me ‘do you want to sleep at night or look over your shoulder for the rest of your life?’
think the film schemes stuff worked for some but most got hit with monster tax bills further down the line .
You pays your money makes your choice .
Plenty of con artists about to fleece anyone who’s a bit green behind the ears .