Administrators of SVS Securities obtain Court approval of distribution plan

The joint special administrators of SVS Securities have published an update to clients of the firm, informing them that the final terms of the Distribution Plan, and the Client Money order, were approved by the Court on May 7, 2020.

The Approval of the Distribution Plan and Client Money order is an important milestone in returning Client Assets and Client Money.

The Joint Special Administrators plan to effect the transfer of the vast majority of Client Assets and Client Money to the Nominated Broker in early June 2020, with clients expected to be able to access their Client Assets and Client Money and engage with the Nominated Broker from mid-July 2020.

For the vast majority of clients, the transfer will take place without any action required of those clients. A small number of clients may be required to provide additional information prior to the transfer and these clients will be contacted individually by the Joint Special Administrators in the week commencing May 18, 2020.

Let’s recall that, as per the report issued by the Administrators in February 2020, have secured client money of approximately £24.9 million, in full, from across 20 pre-appointment bank accounts.

The Administrators initially estimated that SVS Securities had approximately 21,000 clients, however, after conducting further analysis on the client and account base that is held across three different IT platforms, the Administrators identified a number of clients holding multiple accounts with the company. This further analysis has identified approximately 19,200 unique clients. The custody assets and client money are held by a mixture of execution only, discretionary and FX clients. As at August 5, 2019, SVS’s account base comprised 14,855 equity accounts (including 773 discretionary accounts), 10 prime broker accounts and 6,547 FX accounts.