Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Danny Malone. I'm Amigo's Chief Executive. With me today in the room is our Chair, Jonathan Roe, the CFO, Kerry Penfold, our General Counsel and Chief Restructuring Officer, Nick Beal, and our Investor Relations Director, Kate Patrick. Joining us on the call are Non-Executive Directors Maria Darby-Walker, Michael Bartholomeusz, and Gerry Lowry. You will have seen that yesterday morning we announced that the board has taken a very difficult decision to Scheme of Arrangement to the Fallback Solution and to wind down the business. This afternoon, I'd like to explain to you how we got to this position and why we have had to take this action.
However, I want to start by saying this is a very sad day for all of our shareholders, for our people who have worked extremely hard to serve our customers in rebuilding new Amigo, and our wider stakeholders, including creditors who will now receive less redress. As a board and senior team, we want to emphasize that we have left no stone unturned in trying to find a solution. We recognize that our shareholders will have lost significant sums of money, and we are extremely disappointed and regretful that we have not been able to find a route through to deliver a better outcome for each of you on the call. We really have fought as hard as possible at every step of the way. I'm sorry that we can't deliver better news.
The board has always been very clear that the Preferred Solution of our scheme, where Amigo rebuilds a new, more responsible mid-cost lending offer, would be in the best interest of not only our shareholders, but also scheme creditors, employees, and wider stakeholders. That is why following the announcement on tenth of March that we had not been able to secure sufficient levels of investor interest to cover the GBP 45 million of equity capital required, the board explored whether a potential new scheme to eliminate the GBP 50 million capital commitment scheme creditors was likely to succeed.
Whilst internal work on this possibility had been under consideration for the last two months as part of scenario planning, we had clear instruction from the FCA that engaging external advisors on the viability of a new scheme must not be considered until we were certain that the existing scheme and the GBP 45 million capital raise could not be completed successfully. Unfortunately, having taken extensive advice from our advisors, the board has concluded that successfully executing a new scheme followed by a lower capital raise is highly unlikely, and the significant associated costs would therefore cause avoidable detriment to our scheme creditors in the event the new scheme and capital raise are unsuccessful. As a result, we have had to take the very difficult decision to switch the scheme from the Preferred Solution to the Fallback Solution.
In reaching this decision, the board considered a number of factors, including that a new scheme would need to secure creditor approval, High Court sanction, and would need the FCA to not object all within a very tight timetable. Implementing a new scheme would be costly and if not successful, would negatively impact the amount of money creditors would receive. We would need to be confident that the capital, albeit at a lower required quantum, could be raised against what continues to be a very challenging market backdrop with poor sentiment around the sector. We also had to consider as part of this, that the indications of interest for GBP 11 million of equity which you've received to date, were indications only and not firm commitments. The level of this indicative interest has substantially not changed since January.
Since October 2022, we have spoken to approximately 200 potential investors in the process to raise capital. This has been done against an increasingly challenging economic backdrop in the U.K., which has negatively impacted capital markets and the outlook for consumer credit. The main concerns we have heard from investors include current affordability challenges for U.K. households, particularly in our sector of the market, the history of regulatory interventions in the non-standard credit market, and the proposed implementation of a Consumer Duty, the ability to write the loan volumes in the business plan given the market backdrop, and the impact of having to make significant upfront payment of scheme creditors as part of the capital raise.
Conversion rates under our RewardRate pilot lending scheme have improved as we have progressed through the pilot, and changes made to the affordability assessment processes at the beginning of the year have improved loan conversion. However, the business model is not yet proven and although there is strong potential demand, current affordability challenges for U.K. households means most customer applications have to be rejected. The Fallback Solution means that our trading subsidiary, Amigo Loans Limited, stopped lending yesterday and has been placed into an orderly wind-down. All surplus assets after the wind-down will be transferred to the scheme creditors and in due course Amigo Loans Limited will be liquidated. We also announced yesterday that as we transition into the Fallback Solution, the size of the board will be reduced. We will provide more details on this in due course.
Current board came into Amigo because we believe passionately that there is a need in the market for a regulated mid-cost lender that meets the demand of financially excluded people who deserve access to regulated credit. We have faced significant challenges over a number of years in seeking a solution in the best interest of all of our stakeholders, and have had to make a series of difficult decisions. As you know, without a scheme, shareholders would receive no value for their shares, and we have had to consider multiple stakeholder interests from the beginning. In 2021, Amigo presented its first scheme to the High Court to prevent a situation where Amigo was insolvent due to the significant number of complaints it had received. The first scheme was rejected by the High Court as it was deemed too favorable to shareholders.
Amigo returned with a second scheme to address concerns over the fairness of the financial offer to scheme creditors successfully achieving both creditor and court backing. Clearly, the economic and market environment has moved against us considerably since we formulated our scheme in late 2021 and early 2022 and its sanction last May. This has severely impacted both our ability to raise capital and the affordability of loans for our potential customers. Whilst removing the GBP 15 million upfront payment to the scheme would take away one barrier and reduce the capital required, as I've mentioned, there are multiple considerations and risks which have led us to conclude that successfully executing a completely new scheme followed by a lower capital raise would remain highly unlikely.
As I said at the beginning, we understand this is extremely difficult news for our shareholders that have supported us through what has been an extremely challenging period. After full and careful consideration of all further options available to us, we do not believe there is another viable way forward. Thank you for listening, and I'll now hand over to Kate to open the questions.
Thank you, Tony. We will open the call to questions in a moment. Before we do, we've received a number of questions via email, which we'd like to address first. The first question is around directors' duty to shareholders, and it says, "This is unfair to shareholders. Why are you preferring creditors?
I think we have to go back three years, to when the company, you know, through no fault of the shareholders, was, you know, valued at, you know, close to GBP 1.5 billion on the stock market. Claims started coming in for irresponsible lending. You know, there are many opinions on, you know, whether those claims were valid or not. Some believe they were, some believe they weren't. Some blame the FCA, claims management, you know, the claims farmers. You know, and, you know, I'm sure there's a piece of all of the above in it. At the end of the day, the claims were such that the company was insolvent. You know, at that point in time, the company belonged to creditors effectively.
The only way of preserving anything for shareholders was to Scheme of Arrangement done. you know, the company made two attempts at that. You know, with hindsight, you know, we can, you know, pick and choose and say that, you know, we shouldn't have done this, and we shouldn't have done that. You know, those schemes were made with the best of intentions based on the information available at that point in time. You know, the first scheme where, you know, the board of directors was found to be acting too strongly in shareholders' interests. You know, but at the time, shareholders were delighted, and the advisors were saying it should go through. It was only the last-minute intervention from the FCA in objecting to it.
Again, the advisors said, you know, the court will ignore the FCA because the creditors have already approved it. You know, no one has ever overturned, you know, a creditor vote. The court created new precedents by listening to the FCA and overturning the creditor vote. Again, at that point in time, you know, the company is technically insolvent. You know, you know, the board and management did everything it could to get a second scheme through. You know, that second scheme, if it had failed, you know, there wasn't a third option. You know, the business would have gone into wind down at that point in time, and everything would have gone to creditors, and shareholders would have had nothing.
The board had to make sure that there was sufficient in there for creditors to vote for the FCA not to object to, and for the court to support to get that scheme through. At that point in time, you know, believing that someone would pay GBP 15 million effectively for the intellectual property in the business and the assets, you know, and the working capital within the business, you know, it was viable. Unfortunately, the market has changed. You know, in the last 12, 18 months, you know, we have entered into, you know, a cost of living crisis. You know, customers are much more difficult to lend to.
You know, when we're doing affordability assessments. You know, the people who need it most, unfortunately, you know, the way the rules are structured, when someone desperately needs money, you can't provide it to them. You know, those are the rules. They must be able to establish affordability, so it's got to be a structured requirement. They want it for debt consolidation, they want it for a new car. It can't just be because I need money. That makes it much more difficult to lend. You know, on top of which, we have to actually build inflation into their affordability assessment to make sure they can still afford it over the next 12 months. That inflation is running about 10% currently. Those affordability assessments are the reasons why we have struggled to get the conversion rate up.
I'm sure in time we that would've turned and improved, you know, but that is why it has been difficult. You know, in the meantime, getting, you know, the capital raise, you know, across the line became increasingly difficult. You know, the investment just wasn't there. You know, as I said, you know, we went out to, you know, 200 potential investors. You know, we, you know, exhausted the lists of both of our initial professional advisors. We then went public, you know, through an RNS in January and said, "We're struggling to raise the money. You know, if anybody else is interested, please come forward." Actually the two expressions of interest that we did get came off the back of that RNS.
We also engaged additional, you know, advisors to say, "You know, do you have additional lists of people that we can talk to?" We, and we actually talked to about another, I think about 50 people, on the back of those secondary, professional, advisors. You know, it was only when they were totally exhausted, that we got to the point where it became impossible to raise the GBP 45 million. You know, when you're talking to 200 different, you know, professional investors who are consistently telling you this sector is uninvestable at the moment, you know, 18 months ago it might have worked. In 18 months time it might work. You know, but right now, you know, the returns aren't there. They're worried about conversion rates.
You know, they're worried about Consumer Duty and, you know, what's happened to Amigo and others in the market, you know, recent, you know, in recent years happening again and their investment being completely wiped out.
Thank you. Next question I had on the business plan. Did you have a viable business?
We believe the business plan would have been viable, but it was at very early stages, so it was unproven. The lending market, as I said, is especially tough currently because of the cost of living crisis. The expectation is that it would ease in time. You know, the issue that we faced is that, you know, we initially went to the market and said, "You know, we might need GBP 70 million in equity." We took account of the fact that we didn't have, you know, any institutional investors, you know, to rely on to underwrite a rights issue. We tried to reduce the equity ask, and we leveraged up the debt within the business plan.
You know, when you're lending money, you need money, you know, and the debt can only provide so much of that, and you need equity to provide a buffer against the debt, otherwise the debt providers won't lend it. You know, you also need the equity for, you know, what's commonly called the J-curve, you know, the operating losses of the company in the first couple of years, before it breaks even, because obviously your revenues start from, you know, zero, you know, and grow. You know, we tried to minimize the equity ask, you know, we went further. You know, the, you know, GBP 10 million exchangeable offer that we got was effectively more leverage. You know, it was taking the advance rate on the receivables up to pretty much 100%.
You know, it was already a very risky business plan, but possible. You know, we tried to pursue it, but it would have been risky for you guys as well as investors, you know, because there was so little equity cushion in there. If something, you know, we can see in the market, you know, things happen. You know, countries get invaded and, you know, and prices change. You know, to believe that nothing would happen in the next, you know, two or three years until we're profitable again, and therefore not have to come back for more equity and people getting diluted, you know, there was risk in that as well.
You know, that was the business plan that, you know, that we would have put together, you know, had we, you know, got across the line.
Thank you. The third question is why couldn't a new scheme succeed?
We took counsel's opinion on the viability of a new scheme. They basically said that our duties, as I've already said, you know, in terms of the balance between shareholders and creditors, our duties were as soon as we did not expect the scheme. Sorry, the capital raise and the 19 for one dilution to succeed, we had a duty to go into Fallback immediately. You know, at the end of the day, this was a creditors company, but without the scheme. You know, those rights were transferred to shareholders only on the basis the conditions were fulfilled. If we couldn't fulfill a condition, it was transferred back to creditors. I mean, that's the economic reality of it. The, you know, advice from counsel also said that we were out of time.
You know, he said there's no way a judge would approve a consumer scheme in the timelines that we were proposing by quite a long way. He also said further than that, even if you could get over the time question, a judge would reject this unfairness. You know, the upside to creditors was not enough and, you know, considering the risks to creditors. A judge would view this as gambling creditors' money on behalf of shareholders. That is the legal view that would be taken. Therefore, you know, the opinion, you know, counsel's opinion is often, you know, sitting on the fence. You know, this was very much not sitting on the fence. It was very strong, which said we had no choice.
Why didn't you ask the FCA for an extension to the timeline?
It's not down to the FCA, to extend the timeline, it's the courts. The only way to change the timeline of something that's been agreed with the court is to go through another scheme, which as we've just said, wasn't possible.
Thank you. Please can you provide a list of the 200 institutional investors you approached for potential funding?
We won't be providing that list. That's a confidential list of names of people who were approached. You can rest assured that we employed professional advisors, as Danny has already said, with extensive knowledge of the market, and that included all sectors of the potential market, private equity investors, high net worth individuals. In that list of 200 people, we really did ensure that we had the market pretty covered.
Can you give us the exact figures for loans granted since October 2022, applications and approvals?
I can give you the figures that we have today. On the loan book today for RewardRate, that loan book is currently GBP 2.5 million, which is under 500 customers. Specifically during the last full month of February, we received over 10,000 applications, of which we approved just over 200, writing GBP 1.1 million.
Thank you. Was wind down the plan from the start? This comes also with a comment on the board salaries.
I'll take the wind down question. Absolutely not. This was a last resort. You know, I joined the company on the basis of building a business. I didn't come here to wind down a business. You know, this was, you know, absolutely, you know, gutting for me personally, as well, you know, as all of the people who have lost out as a result. I had to tell 190 members of staff yesterday that they were being made redundant. That is not an easy thing to do. This is absolutely not what we wanted to do.
It's John here. Let me pick up on the salaries. The salaries were set because we had to attract the best people we could into what was a very difficult situation. If we tried to do it on the cheap, that wouldn't have worked. I would like to dispel some of the myths out there. Danny's salary is 40% below his predecessor, Kerry's salary is 37% below her predecessor, which was Danny. In addition, as a non-executive board, I have agreed to a 50% reduction in my salary and the other non-execs have agreed to a 30% reduction.
Those, I would say, would have been staging posts for lower amounts of money if we had succeeded in getting RewardRate completely off the ground. That is what we have done. We would have been very conscious of the RewardRate would have been a, quite a small business.
Thank you. With the Q3 update in February, there were reasonable expectations that the conditions of the Preferred Scheme could be met. What has significantly changed since then?
I'll take this one. This was, I think it was an going concern assessment. An going concern assessment did clearly refer to the material uncertainty that existed as a result of the required capital raise. Disclosed that in the view of the directors, there were reasonable expectations of success, but also that the risk that insufficient investment could be forced had increased significantly. We've always tried to be clear in these statements and making consistent with the statements we've made in our RNSs to the market. As disclosed in our announcement on the tenth of March, so post that Q3, discussions with investors to provide the full capital requirement concluded, and Danny has described some of the difficulties there.
Is engagement with the FCA ongoing or is the matter now closed with the business moving into fallback?
Engagement is ongoing. You know, we still have two regulated entities to manage, and a scheme to manage. And, you know, the business is in wind down within there. Engagement is ongoing on those matters.
If we get bought out, would we get something back as shareholders? Linked to this, could Vanir or another Amigo legal entity play a part and take Reward Rate over?
To be clear, the obligation to enter fallback does fall on Amigo Loans Ltd. That is the only revenue-generating entity within the corporate group. There'll be a number of difficulties in establishing another regulated entity in terms of licensing, in terms of permissions, not least in terms of raising the required capital, and again, we've already spoken about some of the difficulties in the market that we have faced in the capital raise.
Yeah. It's probably worth also pointing out that, you know, in our sort of within our corporate structure, the PLC of, I think approximately GBP 65 million to, you know, Amigo Loans Limited. You know, any new money that just comes in at the PLC level would immediately get drawn down to creditors. If someone does come in with a substantial amount of money to build a business and wants to do a deal with, you know, the creditors through the Scheme Supervisor, you know, and buy out the assets and the goodwill, you know, they're welcome, you know, to try that. That is the way that it would have to happen, but they would still have to have the capital to actually support the underlying business afterwards.
Thank you. That's all the questions we've received ahead of the call. We'd now like to open the call for further questions. Now, as there are a lot of people signed in, please can I ask that you limit your questions to one at a time to allow everyone the chance to speak if they would wish to. We will then give you the opportunity to ask further questions if time permits. Please also note that we remain limited in certain confidential matters and cannot discuss individual personal circumstances. Please do use the Zoom function to raise your hand and we will unmute your line. Philip, please can you go ahead.
Hello. I'm still unclear and would appreciate some further information on the fact that because the business is so much smaller now, why we need to raise that GBP 30 million plus the GBP 15 million? I mean, if we're doing so little in the borrowing, I mean, I know it's harsh thing to say, but wouldn't it be better off if half the staff were laid off, costs significantly reduced and keep, you know, at least the business keeps going. Instead of needing the GBP 30 million, perhaps that might have been halved, and then it could have been achieved. Is there no scope to do that?
I appreciate that, Philip, and I'd say we did look at all options, including streamlining the business when we created the business plan. There are unfortunately a large number of costs that come purely with being regulated in terms of the functions that we need to maintain, and of course also to maintain as a listed entity. That comes with a significant element of cost. In any lending business, as Danny said, there's a J curve. We don't start getting our revenues in until later. Unfortunately, the aspect of lending is that you incur a lot of your costs up front. We certainly did look at scaling back the business to a size that could be met within the capital raise parameters that we had in front of us, but unfortunately we just didn't see a way thro
ugh that. Thank you.
Let's go to Chris 1T.
Hello. Hi there. Danny, just in relation to a potential new Scheme. You sought counsel from your advisors and they said that because of the time factors and everything, it's unlikely to succeed. I mean, if we was to go back to Scheme One, where the creditors voted highly in favor, even though the FCA stepped in and said it wasn't fair, I understand that entirely. We're looking at a completely different economic environment where it just wasn't viable to raise the GBP 15 million and contribute it towards a new Scheme. However, I do feel that some money should be offered in comparison if we were to source a new Scheme.
I don't understand in terms of the risk against the, in terms of a percentage against the GBP 97 million that has been put towards redress creditors that we couldn't have found some way to make that work. The timelines as well. We've had 12 months to get the implementation of the New Business Scheme together. Why is it so late that we find ourselves where we are now and that we don't have enough time to pursue a new scheme?
I'll try and answer all of that, but if I miss any of it, someone please chip in. In terms of the timelines, we were, you know, up until January, we believed that we could raise the full GBP 45 million from the people that we were talking to. When that changed, other people came in and, you know, they were, you know, proper investors with material amounts of money behind them. you know, we had reasons to believe them serious in their interest until the point in time where they said, you know, it wasn't for them at this, you know, today. We had explicit instruction from the FCA that we were not to consider a third scheme and not to spend money on a new scheme until all possibility.
I think the words they used were, you know, Scheme two had been pursued to its utmost point. The view they took was that if you went out to the market, that anybody who felt that they could get it for GBP 15 million less would automatically default to that. And therefore, you know, Scheme two would automatically fall by the wayside, and that would disadvantage creditors. And that was outside the spirit of the scheme itself, and they wouldn't support it. So we had explicit instruction from them that we were not ought to do that. In terms of the actual scheme itself, it. Unfortunately, it's not a case of just going to court and appealing for them to say, you know, we, you know, this is only, you know, not a big change.
We would like it, you know, to change. The only way of doing it is by going through a whole new scheme. Getting the documentation drafted up, you know, going out to the creditors and getting them to vote on it and, you know, counsel was quite clear that that would take a lot longer than we had left. Getting the FCA to not object to it, and, you know, the FCA have made clear their feelings that, you know, they shared what counsel eventually did, you know, tell us that they didn't think it was fair to creditors. You know, I, I think, you know, obviously from a shareholder, you know, perspective, you're looking at it from a, you know, "Why didn't you protect us?" I think we've got to bear in mind the point that I made earlier.
You know, the company was insolvent. The scheme was, you know, a way of giving something back to shareholders from the creditors, because at that point in time, they owned it. If we cannot fulfill the conditions that the creditors agreed to, then it goes back to them. That's effectively the way the process works. Unfortunately, the way it had to work, you know, with hindsight, you know, it just couldn't, you know? The GBP 15 million, you know, today, you know, it looks obvious, but at the time it didn't, you know. At the time it was feasible. Some of the people that we talked to early on in the process, you know, they didn't like. Nobody liked the GBP 15 million, but they were prepared to invest.
You know, the reason they chose not to invest is for other reasons. You know, for most people, it was about the sector. You know, they just view the sector as uninvestable at the moment. Way too high risk. They got better options.
Thank you. Chris Daniels, please. Daniel, go ahead.
Hi. Firstly, I can't see anybody today. Is there a reason why I can't see people on this Zoom call?
We don't generally put cameras on when we do an impromptu-
I'd love to see your faces when you answer my questions. I don't know, are you all in Bournemouth or are you scattered at home?
We don't normally do these calls from the office with the camera on anyway.
I would have thought on your last possible AGM call and the behavior of the board this week, you would have shown your faces. Hey, let's go for it. I'm not sticking to one question, okay? I'm pretty sure other people would like to hear what I say, and they'll put their hands down just at the moment to give me more time, okay? I have a whole raft of questions, okay?
Yes.
I'm under no NDA right now. Your lawyers have told me my NDA doesn't exist.
Right. We will stick to one question because we have people who have got their hands up.
I will tell a story to everybody that's listening. I am one of the main investors, okay? I offered GBP 5 million to Amigo Loans, and I also owned in excess of 3 million shares. That went down to a value, obviously, of nothing. I told the Board certain things that I wanted. It was me that came up with the GBP 15 million idea in January. They didn't discuss it. They decided to come up with their own plan, and they went to the FCA with their own plan and not the reduction of the GBP 15 million in cash. That is what has delayed things, okay? Danny Malone has just spoken more than he ever has done, which is great of him. Let's talk about other things.
You've just said you spoke to 200 odd investors. You said none of them were really interested, different things, the markets changed and so on. You never let us shareholders know that none of the investors were actually interested because of market conditions, the risk element. You just said you're still working on it, okay? You have got interest. Turns out you didn't, is it? That's the truth. You had one company out of the 200 that was interested and pulled out, okay? You didn't put an announcement out in January like you said, Danny. Then two white knights came along and offered you a bit of money. I was one of the shareholders that offered you money. What was one of the conditions, Danny, I asked you for? Why will you not take a pay cut?
What was the answer, right? What was the answer? You've taken a pay cut on your predecessor. Is it not true that the GBP 45 million that you're trying to raise is because Gary and you as CFO signed a GBP 6 million contract for a new IT system, and that's what makes up a big proportion of the GBP 45 million that you can't get out of?
It-
Is it not also true that the board did not?
It's useful to take some of those questions now.
Yeah. In terms of the new business plan going forward, all of the executive committee had agreed to take a pay cut, including me, within that new business plan and align our interests with shareholders, so that we would have a upside in the event of building a successful business. All of the executive committee, including me, had agreed to take substantial pay cuts over and above the fact that, you know, I was being paid substantially less than my predecessor already. In terms of, you know, what your discussions were, I can't talk about stuff that was under an NDA, which I believe you are still, you know, held to. Well, what were the other questions? There was quite a few.
I could... Yeah, I did note one point that Daniel made, which I just wanted to correct. It was this idea of the new scheme that came forward in January, and that echoes Christopher's comment from previously. The management have been acute contingencies for a number of months. In fact, we first started discussing this with the FCA in November. We looked at a number of options in relation to the scheme, and I wouldn't want anyone on this call to think that this is an eleventh hour consideration. The management has thoroughly considered all contingencies. Right. Should we go to EO please for a question, if you can unmute your line?
Yeah. Hello, everyone. I have a question about shares. What will happen with the shares, and if you ever consider about being joined to another company or bought by another company in order to let the shares grow again?
The shares are continuing to trade in the market because we don't fit within any of the exemptions which would permit us to apply for a suspension. Absent something that we haven't even hasn't become available or apparent, the shares will eventually be delisted and will have no value because the business has run off and will be put into administration. If somebody was to come over the horizon and make a bid for the company, we have no evidence that that's gonna happen, then that would be put in front of you. We are a mile away from that and it would be completely wrong to hold out any hope for that eventuality.
Thank you. Let's go to Mark J, if you can unmute the line.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yeah. Go ahead.
Hi. Yeah. I think, just a quick point. You mentioned obviously you discussed with advisors about a new scheme. You got all the informative that, you know, this isn't gonna happen and this is a no-go. At the same time, you also had the same advisors tell you that Scheme One would pass. Surely the judge took a different opinion there, set a precedent. You know, surely given you mentioned all the stuff in the market, the war, you've referenced various points. Surely if ever there was a precedent to be set, it would be given the changes in the last 12 months. I'm pretty sure the FCA, the board, I see Sarah's on the call. I'm pretty sure if a, you know, a deal could be sorted for creditors, that they would all support it.
The precedent, it seems ridiculous that you wouldn't consider it or go for it, given that it's out of the hands of no one, but it's just happened due to the market. That's my first question. The second one would obviously be about the business moving into a members' voluntary liquidation going forward or if we're looking at administration. Then just if any insolvency practitioner is gonna be presenting the business to, for sale or anything. I think Jonathan just commented on that. There's the two questions. You know, I think the business, you spent so much on a lending platform, surely there's some value in that when it comes to potentially being sold. Just some questions and thoughts. Feel welcome.
In terms of your second question first, in terms of the business side of it, hopefully there is some value there, but it needs to find someone who's going to want to invest in a new consumer lending platform at the moment. Irrespective of how they do that, they're still gonna need a substantial amount of capital to do so. It's not going through any insolvency process. It's a solvent wind down, with any residual left then going to creditors. You know, if someone did come in and offer to buy it, I'm sure that the Scheme Supervisor would, you know, consider that and, you know, anything that, you know, provided additional benefit to creditors as a result.
In terms of, you know, the first question, you know, in relation to the Scheme, unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. The Scheme is a legal contract between effectively, you know, the court and us and the creditors whereby, you know, they give us, you know, license to. They're getting 20 P in the pound, 17 P in the pound. You know, the value to the company of that Scheme, albeit there's very little left in the company, you know, but, you know, there would have been GBP 500 million worth of liability to those Scheme creditors without the Scheme. You know, the Scheme in a way was good value. Unfortunately, there is no way of doing that Scheme in our current circumstances.
You know, it wasn't our, you know, financial advisors or, you know, our legal advisors. We went and got King's Counsel on this. They were, as I said, a lot more explicit than they normally are on these things. They pretty much said, "You've got no hope.
Okay, let's go to Mary, please. Unmute Mary's line.
Hello. Daniel seems to have been privy to a lot more information than majority of the shareholders currently. If it's possible, I would like to pass my question spot over to him to ask one more question.
I'd rather go around the other people who haven't had a chance yet. Can we go to Mark Tibay's end, please?
Hi there. Yeah, there's ten of us sat in a room, and to be honest, we'd like to listen to what Daniel's got to say, who's just been on the call before, because he seems to know... Yeah, he's got a lot more. We could do with listening to what he wants to say, really. We're all shareholders, and we've all lost a lot of money, and he's got a lot of good points from the sounds of it. I'd like to pass my question on to him, really.
Okay. We'll let Daniel have a question. Please, Daniel, respect the situation.
I think I am respecting the situation, the fact that you've all got a job, the shareholders have lost money. I think out of everybody, and on behalf of all the shareholders, I think we've been quite patient with the board. I've got a lot of questions, okay? You know I have, please don't keep muting me, okay? You've earned a lot of money out of us shareholders, you should answer every question I've got, okay? My first question is to Danny. Now we're in Fallback Solution, what is your pay moving forward? You've offered what, 30%, you're now on 335,000. Do you think a CEO of a company going into liquidation, wind down, whatever you wanna call it, should be on GBP 335,000?
If the lady's on from the Debt Camel website or whatever, take him for everything he's got, because that money is to creditors now, right? Danny, what are you gonna offer the creditors for your salary? When I was investing GBP 5 million, you wouldn't give me anything.
That's not true.
No, you wouldn't give any guarantees what you were giving.
That is not true.
No, that-
Stop. Whoa, stop, stop. I offered several direct calls with you, which you declined. You would only talk through Peel Hunt. Peel Hunt did communicate to you the reduction in salary that the board and the executive team-
They told me what Jonathan would give. They told me what Jonathan would give, right?
Oh, they all know. They told me that they told you what we were prepared to cut our salaries to in that new scheme. Yeah.
Yeah. My argument, Danny, this has been my argument since the last call, and it's been my argument since January, okay? It was part of the last call. It shouldn't be up to us shareholders. Maria, you're on the call as well from an ethical point of view. It shouldn't be up to us shareholders to tell you what you should be doing ethically on your wage. Please stop bringing up the past of the guy that signed SOA Two, right? It's nonsense, it's pathetic. It was a different position. As you keep saying, you've took a pay cut from what he was on. I don't care, right? What I care about was, you knew in December you'd been dealing with 200 odd people, which you said, and only one of them really was in conversation with you, right?
You knew there was a likelihood of this business succeeding on SOA Two was very slim. You didn't say at the time, "We're struggling creditors, we're struggling shareholders. We ethically, as a board, should not be taking these salaries. What we'll do, we'll get in bed with the shareholders. We'll take a pay cut, and we'll take shares depending on what happens in 12 months." It shouldn't have been me to come to you with that. You should have done that. I don't even need an answer to that. It's not even a question. That's a statement, okay? Ethically. Anybody that employs you after this should actually be looking at that as well because ethically, it's bloody incorrect, right? First one, and that's near enough everybody on the board. Jonathan, you did offer 50%, good on you, right?
The rest of it was, "What does Daniel want?" Right? Let's talk about this IT system, right? 'Cause you've never explained to anybody why you needed GBP 45 million, have you? Not one of the board has ever mentioned it. Let's go into this, right? Let's crunch the numbers for these shareholders. Seeing as they've been wiped out, and to anybody that thinks there's anything left of this company or you're gonna get bought out, forget it, because I was the investor, right? No one else, okay? There is no Amigo. It's gone, right? No one's gonna buy it. Nobody wants to invest in it, okay? Your shares have had it. Let's go back to this GBP 45 million, right? What did you need GBP 45 million for?
The fact that I told you several months ago via Peel Hunt, you should be getting rid of 50% a minimum of your workforce now. The Scheme Two should not even have 200 odd employees. What did you do? You made like 15 redundancies or 30 redundancies. All of it's nonsense. On this call you've said you've done, what was it? I wrote the bloody thing down, I was like, "Look, do the wake up. Fed up already, innit?" You've only done up to March, originations of GBP 1.1 million or something you came out with. You've told us on every RNS and every call, you've been doing over GBP 1 million a month.
Okay, we'll answer the question. As we just said, the current balances are two and a half million, and in February, we wrote GBP 1.1 million, which is in line with what we said in the RNS. In terms of the business plan going forward, as we have previously explained to the market and specifically to anyone under NDA as what the business plan looked like, the first GBP 15 million of the GBP 45 million was going into the scheme. The remaining GBP 30 million, GBP 12 million of that was to support the receivables. This is a lending business. The debt will not lend up to 100% of all receivables. We received some additional leverage debt offers that took most of that GBP 12 million off the table.
The remaining GBP 18 million was to build up the business for the first couple of years until it got to the point of break-even. All of the expenses had to be paid. Revenue started zero and built from there. In terms of the existing staff, the business plan going forward did have and always had substantial reductions in it. This business, in the short-term, still has a legacy book to collect under the creditor's part and the turnover provision on the scheme, and still has a scheme to administer. A lot of the current people are working on those two pieces. The scheme is paying for those, not the new investors. That was made clear to you as part of the NDA, as it was made clear to every investor, every potential investor.
Let's go to Chris first.
Well, that was insightful. Yeah, I mean, just taking on Daniel's points there. We were sorting an investor back in October after the FCA agreed to relend, which was not clear RNS, or if I remember rightly, it was under a pilot scheme. I feel we did have enough time. We had discussions with you. When I say we, part of the RewardRate Shareholders Group with, well, we did hold about 10%, as of recently. We were in discussions there to, in January, asking about a potential scheme because it seemed from the RNSs that we'd had that things weren't going very well. I think maybe in January we could have had enough time to potentially look at a scheme.
We was aware that the costs were in the region of, Now nothing's been clarified, but maybe a maximum of GBP 3 million. I mean, we've already got all of the administrative paperwork from the original scheme, I don't think it would have been too difficult at that time. Now to say that we have run out of time, we did raise this question a number of times, especially it was mainly Nick that had most clarification on a potential new scheme at that point. I mean, I do believe that the creditors should benefit by way of in addition to the GBP 97 million that is currently committed to them.
I feel that we could have acted earlier, and put something in place that is more than likely that the creditors would be in favor of. I just can't believe we are where we are. We've had multiple discussions with you. This is a tough pill to swallow, to be honest, and I feel my heart goes out to all investors. It just seems that we've run the clock down.
Understand that, Chris, and yeah, you've been really supportive of, you know, the company since day one. You know, we genuinely did not want this to happen. You know, as I said earlier, this is nothing to do with investors doing anything wrong. You know, you guys have all lost out, and we are really sorry for that. You know, we approached the FCA back as far as November about the potential to do a new scheme. They made it clear at that time that now was not the time, in their view, to be considering it.
We went back to them in January, their opinion hardened, in terms of, you know, to the point of they actually wouldn't let us spend money investigating a new scheme, you know, getting the Counsel's opinion on whether it was possible until the second scheme, you know, the words were pursued to the utmost. We had discussions about what that potential new scheme would offer creditors. We looked at profit share. We looked at, you know, giving them shares in a scheme. The pushback that we got on those ones were they were too uncertain, too complex and were not timely enough. Anything that didn't offer effectively cash up front, they weren't prepared to support.
You know, and without their support, you know, we, you know, risked everything blowing up again. What we proposed was that the, you know, our assessment of the turnover provision, you know, within the current scheme at the moment was GBP 8.7 million. We said, "We'll take the uncertainty out for creditors, and we will guarantee that GBP 8.7 million and that amount will go to creditors this year, so they've got certainty and, you know, and they can exit." That wasn't deemed, you know, we couldn't offer any more because we didn't have it. You know, if we increased the GBP 8.7 million by another GBP 5 million-
You know, to try and sort of, you know, widen the gap. It was another GBP 5 million we had to raise in equity, and it wasn't there. If we reduced the GBP 8.7 million to try and make the equity more certain, then, you know, it made it even less likely that a court would approve it. You know, we were just unfortunately caught between a rock and a hard place.
Thank you. Can we go to Mike Symes?
Yep. Hello, everybody.
Hello, Mike.
First of all, let me say, I've been in contact with colleagues in RewardRate Shareholders Group and Mo Majed in ASAG. And I think that fair to say that everybody is happy to be working together, representing, you know, our respective shareholders groups. The first question that I'd like to ask is really related to the creditors. Is it to the benefit of the creditors for the company to survive financially?
Yes, it is. It would be. Yeah.
Under those circumstances, would not every conversation that would take place or could take place with the FCA and/or the High Court be based on the fact that the company is proposing to meet its obligations as far as the GBP 15 million payment is concerned, but in the current market situation, it isn't feasible to pay the GBP 15 million out of an initial capital raise, but to pay it over a period of time out of the profits that the company will be making? I know that isn't what is put into the current SOA.
Yeah.
Under circumstances where it's to the advantage and to the benefit of the creditors for that to happen, they're no worse off by agreeing to that, they can only be better off. Is it not feasible where the High Court has already created one precedent, as was, as we were told earlier on, is it not feasible that they could create another precedent and agree to amend the current SOA?
Mike, thank you very much for that question. I think it's really important just to remind people that the only way of Scheme of Arrangement is through Scheme of Arrangement. Danny has already mentioned the very compelling advice that we received from King's Counsel within the last few days, that it was very clear to him that we had run out of time to be able to go through a consumer scheme with our consumer customers as creditors. Again, you know, let me assure you that the board and the executive team have considered many of the different scenarios. Danny's already talked about, you know, was there a way of equitizing the GBP 15 million? Could we make certainty around the GBP 8.4?
We had… You know, could we do something about future profits, which you may recall was part of the initial scheme. It was clearly turned down by the court in terms of a future profit share. That was something that we had looked at before and came back, and we reconsidered. What became very clear in our conversations with particularly the FCA was that if there was as possible. Even the lack of certainty around the ability to do an equity raise, which any new scheme would have been conditional upon, was a condition almost too far in terms of that. I think they accepted that, you know, that was a necessity.
The only way I think we really could have made any variation was if there was absolute certainty that, A, the money would be available for creditors, and B, there was certainty as to those monies. They would be paid in a timely fashion. We, as you may recall, we used an Independent Customers' Committee to advise us through the second scheme. The three things that came back very clearly from that committee was they wanted cash, they wanted certainty, and they wanted it as quickly as possible. As we discussed all the various options around the scheme three, potential scheme three, they were the three key things that we and the FCA kept coming back to.
Okay, can we go to Ian?
Coming back to shares point, please. Could you let me know or let us know, time frames in terms of, tradings, in terms of, when you're thinking to shut this down, specific date or month or anything, because 12 months is not enough to understand where the company is going. Thank you.
Oh, apologies. I don't genuinely know. As time goes by, I would imagine that the volume of shares or the market makers participating will disappear. If we end up with less than two market makers, then the Stock Exchange, I think, will potentially automatically delist us. I can't give you a set date. It could disappear at any moment.
I mean, yeah, our advisors did ask the FCA should we delist, and the FCA said we don't fit any of the rules, so there's no reason to delist or sorry, to suspend at this point in time.
Okay. Can we go to Andrew M line, please?
Hi there. Am I unmuted now?
Yeah, you are. Please go ahead.
I'll try and be quick. You've stated that you've not been able to get enough investment in, and obviously you've gone through an extensive process of seeking out professional investment. As a shareholder, admittedly, I'm behind the barrier of Hargreaves Lansdown, but I have provisioned money. I've put money aside in order to make sure that at least GBP 0.10 per share was available to the business at whatever point you decided to come to me for that money and whatever mechanism it is that you would use to do that.
I would assume that there's a lot of shareholders on the call now, admittedly small shareholders like me, that would also have been prepared to stump up the cash and provide a percentage of the money that you needed. That mechanism has never been engaged with. You've never approached me for the funds. I'm still at the point where I would be prepared to put in funds. Admittedly, it's 0.1% of the GBP 45 million that you need. I don't feel that you've asked. I don't feel that you've engaged with us. I don't feel like you've asked for the money in order to save this business. That's the point.
One of the issues we face is that the overwhelming, if not 100% of our shareholder base is our retail investors. The harsh truth is that we can only approach retail investors to solicit interest in buying new shares is with a full registered prospectus. We haven't done one of those. They are very expensive. However, a number of estimates have been made as to what we think the collective shareholder base would contribute in a fundraise, and the number comes back as GBP 5 million from, I would say, different sources. I don't think they're echo chambers. That GBP 5 million was factored into our calculations as when we came up with the need to go for GBP 27 million.
It's, you know, a perennial issue that, you don't know the answers to that until you arrive with a, with a full-blown prospectus. There are bound to be lots of people who will wish to participate, whether that adds up to meaningfully more than GBP 5 million, I don't know, and I suspect not.
I think, one of the shareholder groups, you know, themselves, you know, did some analysis and felt that the amount was, you know, just over GBP 5 million.
Thank you. Can we go to Royston iPhone, please? Unmuted 1. Please go ahead.
Hi. Yeah. Hiya. I appreciate it's odd that you don't wanna listen to what Daniel has got to ask you. I'm intrigued to hear more from him. I know I'm on LSE as well at the moment. There's quite a lot of other people that want to hear what he's got to say. I'd appreciate it if for this last roar, you could actually allow him to speak again.
We will do. We were just trying to get everybody.
No. I think he's got a lot of questions that a lot of us want to hear the answers to as well.
I've asked one. We'll go back to Daniel for one more, please.
Is it Mark then?
Yes.
Yeah. Mark, sorry.
We'll go to Daniel.
Okay.
We'll go to Daniel, and for one more please.
Hi. Sorry, I'm on one more?
Yes, please then.
I just want. Well, my first one is, when are you gonna answer my question about what pay cuts you're gonna take now it's gone into wind down?
That's, you know, a matter-.
It's not a matter. It's a matter for public record on the basis you've got shareholders, right? That want to know how much you're taking on a wind down, and you've got creditors that want to know how much you're gonna take of their money on a wind down.
I'm not proposing to change anything in the wind down, but obviously the amount of work that will be required over the period of wind down will reduce. My remuneration will reduce in line with that requirement.
Thank you. Can I go to Philip, please?
Hello. Thanks. Yeah. Just to follow up, from what's been discussed, now that we're in wind-down, you say we couldn't go for an amendment to the scheme because there wasn't time, we've gone into wind-down. Now we're in wind-down, could we not separately, in parallel, apply for an amendment to the scheme anyway, if it's approved, we can move forward on that basis? We'd have the time now. We've got 12 months of wind-down before the company finally wraps up. In terms of the cost of that, if it is just as simple as whether you remove the GBP 50 million or defer payment of the GBP 50 million. I mean, it's changing a few lines in the already drafted document and, you know, change the date on the top.
It shouldn't be that much money or time to do that and then reapply for that amendment. If even if there's no money in the pot to do that, I thought there's 100 odd people on this call. Even if everyone chipped in a few hundred GBP, you're gonna then get tens of thousands GBP, which should more than cover the, the time and cost to do that amendment. At least let's have one last roll of the dice. You know, it's a shot to nothing, but surely that's better than doing nothing at all, leaving the company wrapped up and everyone losing all their money. Thank you.
I'll take that question. As you mentioned, cost is clearly one of the big things. It's a very expensive process to go through to do a new scheme, which is, as I've mentioned before, what we would need to do to vary that. Having gone into the fallback, you know, clearly we will continue to collect out. Alongside the timing issue, counsel's other main concern, was around the fairness of the proposed new scheme.
By fairness, the view was that effectively we were potentially gambling creditors' money for the benefit of shareholders in that the additional potential upside for creditors was not sufficiently large that he felt the court would sanction a scheme that even though it was slightly more, it was not sufficiently more, that he felt the court would give it the time to be able to do that. You know, notwithstanding all the other challenges around getting creditors to vote on a new scheme, engaging with the FCA in respect of the new scheme and getting them on board, the question still remains around whether a court will sanction a scheme that gives a very little additional amount to creditors as a result of going through all that process. It wasn't just timing.
That was one of the key things. Another key thing was the overall fairness of the scheme, and that's one of the other points that the counsel really highlighted, and was important in the Board's consideration of whether to pursue a scheme or to enter the fallback arrangement.
Thank you. Can we go back to Chris, please?
Hi again, Danny. Hello.
Hi.
Yeah, on a separate note, it's not my question, but I would like to hear a bit more from Daniel moving forward as well. I understand what the gentleman just said a minute ago about in wind-down, we've got 12 more months. We could go back to the courts and ask the question. I believe they would. I believe that if we went back with a new scheme, the court can't look upon the previous scheme. He must look at it with no prejudice to any existing schemes and only what we're proposing.
I understand what you said a moment ago, Nick, about the fairness of the scheme, but I'm struggling to understand the logic behind that, because if we are already committed to GBP 97 million for the redress for creditors, the small risk in terms of the cost to go back to court, it wasn't as much as what I actually originally thought. I threw a number of about GBP 6 million, GBP 5 million or GBP 6 million, and you self said that it would cost all nowhere near that. Where creditors could see an additional sum on top of the GBP 97 million in the current scheme, I mean, at the heart of any new scheme would be the maximum redress that the company can put in terms of cash.
I'm fully aware that the ICC came to a decision where they wanted as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. We are committed to that, and that would be at the heart of a new scheme. The à la carte menu that was mentioned in the first scheme that the judge would like to see offered to creditors, we don't have that option for additional GBP 15 million. What we could do is, as the gentleman said, defer some money. I think there is benefit for creditors to see this and look favorably upon a new scheme. Don't forget that all creditors, including the FOS, voted highly in favor on scheme one.
If you're gonna compare schemes, I said this is still better than what we originally came to the table with on the first scheme. I think creditors will benefit financially in this way. I don't understand. I know we've got the date of the 26th of May to have this all wrapped up. I just don't believe that there's no way that we can't go back to the courts and speak to the FCA and get a new scheme proposed and put through. You said yourself that they set a precedent in terms of Scheme Two that we managed to scrape through. Why do we believe that there's no chance to set a new precedent?
I mean, this is-A very, very challenging economical environment that we're faced with now, and I understand that, but we're in much different circumstances we were a year ago. I believe-
Sorry, Christopher. Shall I deal with two perhaps misunderstandings that I think are generally held?
Yeah.
One is around the 26th of May. The 26th of May was only ever an important issue in respect of the Preferred Solution. That was the long-stop date by which we had to complete the capital raise under the New Business Scheme to remain within the Preferred Solution. Having gone into the Fallback Solution, the 26th of May has no additional relevance. The 26th of May doesn't continue to be relevant in any sense. The second is in relation to GBP 97 million. Again, that was part of the New Business Scheme's Preferred Solution. GBP 97 million was paid into the scheme pot, GBP 60 million in June of last year, and another GBP 37 million paid in February of this year in line with the scheme.
The arrangement under the Fallback is not that that GBP 97 million is automatically available for creditors. Creditors receive everything that is available to them after the business is wound up. That may or may not be more or less than the GBP 97 million. The GBP 97 million is again, not specifically part of the Fallback Solution. I just wanted to deal with those two misconceptions that I know a number of people have had, so I thought it'd be helpful on that. The point around fairness and fairness to creditors is an assessment of what the creditors would receive under the Fallback against what they would receive under any new scheme, which we've called Scheme Arrangement Three.
The council's view is that there has to be a material difference between those. It's a very similar view that we've heard from the FCA as well, that there needs to be a material difference for it to be a worthwhile scheme to pursue so that creditors get significantly more as a result of going into the, into a new scheme and all the costs and the difficulties of dealing with a scheme and getting creditors to vote for a scheme. There has to be significantly more available to them as a result of that. As I think Daniel has already said, the truth is there isn't any more. We are effectively paying everything we can possibly pay into the scheme. Everything goes to the scheme and the fallback, so it's difficult to see what else could be included.
We have considered, as I mentioned before, all the different options, profits, equity, certainty, etc. The difficulty, of course, with profits is we're taking profits from the new equity that comes in. We know where the business plan doesn't have profits in the early years, and Daniel's explained the need for the GBP 45 million to cover the J-curve in terms of the early loss, early year losses. You're therefore asking equity investors to invest knowing that it's even longer before they begin to see a return on their equity. That was an additional difficulty that we considered.
We have considered all these things, and, you know, it's very unfortunate, but the board have, you know, come to the view, and it's been a very difficult one for them to do so, but the best option in the circumstances that we're in, taking into account the requirements of all our stakeholders, is to go into the Fallback.
Let's go to Mark flying please. Mark, are you okay?
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yeah. Just I'll try and keep this as short as possible, but. I think it's very clear the consensus from all the shareholders is that an SOA 3 is potentially possible. I know cost is one of the main challenges. I'm pretty confident that between all the shareholders invested, the ASAG, RSRG are working together now they're aligned. The shareholders could fund, you know, if not all, majority of the costs that would cover that. That's not an issue. You know, there is the case of you go to a customer and say, "Here's GBP 100 today," or, "Would you like GBP 100 today and this in the future?" I'm pretty sure the creditors would go with the second option. You've got Sarah on the call, as I said earlier. Engage with Sarah.
She could get you a ballpark figure on any engagement on what they would be willing to look at, discuss. I think you're making a lot of decisions without actually reaching out to the people that matter the most. You're making a lot of decisions for shareholders without asking them. You're making a lot of decisions for creditors without asking them. The FCA will approve something if all parties are aligned, and I think shareholders helping creditors and vice versa would be aligned. You have a business that runs forward. I mean, you've taken advice from legal counsel, and you seem to be sticking with that. I'm sorry, they advised you the first one would pass, and they got it wrong. They advised you the second one would pass, and it did. The advisors are on a 50/50 sort of success rate at the moment.
I really think you've jumped the gun on this without actually asking the people who it matters to the most. You know, you could leave tomorrow and you're gone. The shareholders, the creditors, we're here in 12 months, 18 months' time. Like, I really think you need to go away after today. Evaluate and reach out to people and actually get an understanding of if that's what they want. You're directors, you're taking a salary, you should be doing what they want.
We would still need to be able to raise the remaining GBP 27 million to build a business on the back of it. That money hasn't been there. It isn't there. Yeah. So yeah, it's, you know, it's a combination of certainty of getting a scheme approved, yeah, and also certainty of raising the capital to be able to pay the amount that you're promising those creditors. If the capital raise looks unviable, the judge will ignore the amount that you're promising the creditors and say, you know, "You're not gonna be able to raise it." You know, so the whole thing has to stack up in its totality, I'm afraid.
Let me go to Mike. Can I expect Mike to sign, please?
Unmute, Mike.
Mike, you need to un-mute yourself maybe.
I'm sorry. I saw that you unmuted me and assumed that it did mine as well. Forgive me. Listen, I think that it's important from my point of view, and I probably believe everybody else's point of view, for there to be an adjustment in the way that the board are approaching the current situation. It sounds like every reason in the world is being found as to why something won't work to make the company survive and be successful, as opposed to looking for every means possible to make it happen. I've had experience with counsel and getting counsel's opinion.
It depends entirely on what the counsel's instructions are and what they're being asked as to what kind of opinion they'll come back with. I've often found in the past that you can go to two different counsel and get two totally different opinions from them on the same subject. As the previous question, questioner said, the 1st counsel in the SOA 1, Roger Bennett, who's not with us anymore, you know, the way that he presented the case, the way that he dealt with the questions being asked of him during the hearing was absolutely appalling. 2nd counsel, far better. Yeah.
In this situation, I do not see how it is possible that where the creditors will benefit, as you've just pointed out, the GBP 97 million that is available for creditors guaranteed if the company survives, it's not guaranteed if it doesn't. Yeah. It's guaranteed that they won't get any element of the GBP 15 million. If there is any perception that there may be some doubt about whether or not they'll get the GBP 15 million with an adjustment to the current SOA, you know, then it's got to be logical that the court would approve the adjustment where it can only benefit the creditors to do so.
As far as the fundraise is concerned, let me go on to that one, because paragraph 13 of the judgment came down, you know, in respect of SOA 2, states as follows: "The NBS, the New Business Scheme, provides for two alternative solutions, the Preferred Solution and the Fallback Solution, the implementation of which will depend on whether or not two conditions, called the New Business Conditions, are satisfied. The first one, we know the FCA has allowed the company to start relending. The second is that within 12 months of the NBS becoming effective, Holdings issues at least 19 ordinary shares for every one ordinary share in issue immediately beforehand. The share issue therefore mandates the dilution of Holdings ex-existing shareholders by at least 95% in respect of their existing shareholdings." Goes on to talk about the GBP 15 million of proceeds coming from the share issue.
As far as I'm aware, and I'll go so far as to say I know this to be the case as you do, there has been no attempt to directly offer the shareholders that 19 to one dilution in order to raise the GBP 15 million. I believe that it's an obligation on behalf of the board to pursue that route regardless of what other discussions you've been having with potential underwriters of a share issue for far, far more than GBP 15 million, and acknowledging the fact that more money will be required in due course.
In the current situation, if potential investors, be it Daniel or anybody else, is prepared to put money into the company, if they know it's going to be available to put money into, as opposed to going into a fallback position where it isn't, it's more likely than not that they would be prepared to do so. You know? Taking all of these things into consideration, I believe the shareholders should be consulted as to how much money they're prepared to put in. Mo Majed sent out a survey this time yesterday, and in less than 24 hours, he's had responses back from at least, I think 50 or 60 of the shareholders confirming that they would be prepared to commit over GBP 1 million to-
... a raise, that's without a prospectus. You know, with a prospectus showing how much money the company is likely to be making going forward, I believe that there would be a very healthy response. I don't think it's appropriate to put the company into fallback where you're estimating the possibility or the likelihood that only GBP 5 million might be raised from shareholders without actually putting it to the test. Supposing you offered the shareholders the opportunity to put money and they came up with GBP 15 million. Would that.
Sorry. Mike, Jonathan, the problem with the GBP 15 million is that it's not enough. As Danny has said, we need. If the GBP 15 million merely goes over into the scheme, that leaves us with no resources to actually run the business. I will happily.
Jonathan, you have commitments, you know, obviously non-binding commitments for GBP 21 million. That would be on top of the potential GBP 15 million.
You-you're-
There has been no discussion with the shareholders, with myself, with Daniel, you know, with any of the other people who may be willing and able to get involved in discussing ways and means of potentially being able to raise the money over and above the 200 people that Oliver has spoken to. I believe that it's appropriate to have a meeting with me, with Daniel, with Mo, with Chris, and whoever else would need to be or want to be involved in order to explore those avenues.
I understand exactly what you're saying. We have the indications of interest we had from the other people was that we're not prepared to put money into the GBP 15 million to pay the scheme creditors. I take that as a line in the sand. I have said freely to you and others that if it was a simple operation of a rights issue to raise the GBP 15 million to pay to the creditors, I would not be recommending that as a sensible investment because without the additional follow-on money needed for the working capital to fund the J-curve, as Danny has said, you could find yourself making that investment and then still having nothing.
You'd be GBP 15 million down at that point, and it would still have no worth at the end of it. That's a real issue. The other issue is that we, in a prospectus, you're obliged to put in a working capital statement, which looks 15-18 months out. Actually says 12 in the rules, 15-18 months is the market norm. That would be qualified. We would not be able to give any assurance if we raised GBP 15 million, all of which went over to the Scheme creditors, that we'd have enough money to survive more than a fortnight after raising it.
We also wouldn't be able to pass the FCA's threshold conditions, of actually having sufficient funds to manage the business for the foreseeable future.
Yeah.
If you go to Daniel's line, for one question, please, Daniel.
Hi. Right. I'm not gonna go off on one on this last call because I'm at lunch. I still think you're all wrong, the board especially. There is a couple of things I would point out, okay? It's very simple, okay? The creditors, and Sarah's on the call, is better off, very, very simple this is, right? Doesn't need a genius, doesn't need 10 board members to work this out, okay? If the creditors are better off with the company surviving, then it doesn't matter really at this moment in time what the FCA says, what your lawyer says, or what you say. It's about the creditors. The money is already in the pot. If you read the Facebook page of Amigo creditors, it says quite clearly they're just fed up. They want their money.
A lot of them just want it wiped off and the credit report sorted, and they're willing to take that hit, okay? All they're bothered about, very clearly, is the fact they've waited too long, and they want it settled, okay? It's very easy. You're now going to tell them it's gonna take 12 months, and they might get 17 p. If the company survives, the money's already in the pot for them now, isn't it? Right? Where you can start distributing it next week because the money's already there for them. That was a no-brainer. There is no way the FCA... If Sarah and the group creditors would have got together and said, "Look, we just want our money now. We're fed up." If they'd have backed it, the FCA would have backed it.
You know and I know that you've taken advice from your lawyer, and they've said, "The chances are..." The point is, and as you know, if the creditors had been on your side and if the FCA had been on your side, the judge would have approved it. End of. Very simple, right? There's no way a judge is gonna go away against the creditors, right? They want certainty. I told you in January, the FCA wanted certainty, and I told you the creditors wanted certainty about what they were getting. They were fed up with it. Shareholders, and obviously I am a shareholder, the shareholders wanted to know what's happening. I tried everything, right, to help you guys, right?
You also know that you announced this RNS yesterday. I rang up straight away and said, "Why didn't you come to me about these costs? I would have covered the legal costs." I actually offered to pay the legal costs. You didn't give me the opportunity. You just announced an RNS again. The creditors wouldn't have been worse off if we'd have gone to the FCA or if we'd have gone to the judge because the money is the same today as it was yesterday. It's in the pot for them. I was covering the legal fees. You quickly just announced an RNS. You've even got shareholders on now saying they were willing to cover legal fees. I stood up yesterday and said, "Guys, what are you doing?
I would have paid it." You didn't listen to me again. You never engage with shareholders. That's why I get angry, right? We could have saved this business. It's too late now. You've already announced it. Right? Sarah, I do feel sorry for you and the creditors, of course we do. The creditors have to understand, the shareholders now are not the people that did all the creditors over two years ago. It's all about writing all these things all over Facebook. We're not those people. We go to work, we work hard, and we've invested in a company. We didn't stitch anybody up, okay? We haven't done anybody over. That was the company of old, right? That was the shareholders of old that owned 60% of the business. You should have gone after them, right?
Issue a legal claim against them directly for more money. Amigo shareholders now have done you no harm. No, when did the board or the actual creditors group ever sit down and say, "Look, we've got 8,000 white-collar shareholders here that didn't own shares three years ago, that didn't do you over, that didn't chase you for this money." They didn't. They didn't show our plight to the creditors group. They just all think we're fat cats earning lots of money from it. That's the wrong thing. The board haven't helped either. With huge salaries, it doesn't help the cause. It should have been an open, honest, and transparent dealings with creditors and shareholders alike. Yeah, I agree. Shareholders should have been given the opportunity to actually vote. They could have saved it.
The board's making decisions which if they'd have just. I was like, and everybody keeps talking about this Vincent, right? He sold his shares one year ago, right? He doesn't own any shares, people, right? I was the largest Amigo shareholder. Nobody ever said, like, "What can you offer? What can you do?" That's what annoys me. I still think Amigo has got a part to play. What. I can't. There is weird things that I can't understand, like how you can suddenly decide that guarantor lending doesn't work when you should have known that as a board. You knew all last year it doesn't work. We wasted money on trying to convert these loans, right? It's things like that. All the industry knew it wasn't working.
That's why you went to 200 investors and they said no. Why you as a board that's on the ground aren't telling us shareholders it's not working? I don't mean your RNS saying you're struggling to find GBP 45 million. I'm on about you saying to us the business model doesn't work anymore. You've said it several times on this call, why didn't you tell us three months ago?
Can we-
You kept.
I'll try and answer those variety of questions. In terms of the guarantor loan piece, as we have said, the first couple of months of lending, we had lots of it's a new system, new processes, new people, there were lots of process issues. You know, trying to figure out what was working and what wasn't working, didn't really get going until early January. You know, within a couple of months, we realized that the conversion rates were too low on the guarantor loan product, but were viable on the unsecured loan product. In time, when the, you know, the market changes, that might switch. We did put a hold on it and, you know, within a couple of months is relatively quickly.
You know, if we'd cut it without any evidence, you know, would've been accused of the opposite. You know, in terms of, you know, engagement with shareholders, we have done what we can in terms of this process. You know, the people that we spoke to, you know, I'm not gonna breach any, you know, confidences, told us what they could invest. You know, they also told us their likelihood of investing. You know, you know, one was quite high and the other was 50/50. We had to take that into account in terms of, you know, the likelihood of any capital raise succeeding.
In terms of the upside and downside to creditors, you know, there was material amount which they would have, you know, got from the GBP 8.7 million that we were looking to crystallize and pay to them, but they also would have received more than the GBP 97 million based on the wind down plans that were there. It was the gap in between that was deemed not to be enough to basically in, you know, counsel's opinion, gamble creditors' money for that.
You know, those costs over the approximately four months that it would have taken to complete both a scheme and a capital raise, if a scheme could have been done in that two-month period, you know, in that four months, more costs would have been burnt within the business in, you know, generating new RewardRate loans, in addition to, you know, the legal and professional costs of both the scheme and the capital raise. There was substantial downside. That is the opinion the FCA had, and they were quite clear on that opinion. That is the opinion that counsel had that a judge would take. You know.
If, you know, if this was, you know, we pushed hard to get the FCA to allow us to get council opinion to be able to bank on that. Unfortunately, council opinion came in the opposite, or not quite the opposite, but it came in a lot more strongly against than we expected. You know, we thought he might come in and say, "It's possible, give it a go." He pretty much said, "It's impossible, stop.
Can I go to Chris Cole cost line, please?
Yeah, hi. Just a couple of quick questions. Just on the sort of clarity of, if we wanted to consider, a reversion back to the preferred scheme, is that possible? If it is, then does that sort of May 26th date come into play again? Then secondly, are you as directors and, are you prepared to make a sort of disclosure on your current shareholdings and also those of any share incentive plans?
Let me deal with Jonathan right here. It's in the accounts. I own 180,000 shares. I bought them at the wrong price, like sadly everybody else did. I think Maria and again Michael Bartholomeusz own something like 100,000 shares. There's been no moment where an open period trading for either Kerry or Danny to buy any shares. Indeed, they haven't. I don't think the sort of share options or anything else like that have been put in place for either of them.
No. I was committing to buy shares in the capital raise if it had succeeded.
Scheme wise, as I've already said, the, you know, having gone into the fallback, that is the outcome of the scheme. The only way to change the scheme is do another scheme. The 26th of May is no longer applicable because that related to the Preferred Solution under the New Business Scheme. That is gone by us, triggering the switch into the fallback scheme. That is, you know. That is all, you know, all we can really say around that. The 26th of May date has now gone because it's no longer relevant. We are in the fallback scheme. Theoretically, it is possible to do a new scheme, but we've always said there's problems around costs and whether there's any sufficient benefit core creditors as a result of doing that.
It would need to be material, and, you know, the business hasn't got any more that it can put in that would make a material difference to our creditors.
Can we go to Kamal Palmer's line, please?
Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Yes, I've heard a lot of views today, and I'm quite astonished as to why you guys are not listening to the shareholders and some people who are actually willing to fund these things. My question now is, given that you're on the fallback now, are you prepared to listen to the shareholders or even get contributions from the shareholders to actually move forward to a third scheme or even revert back to the first scheme which already had the creditors' approvals?
In terms of the first scheme, the first scheme wasn't sanctioned, so that's already been done and dusted. You know, we then proposed a second scheme. That or a second and at the time, third scheme, we ran two schemes simultaneously. The creditors were voted in favor of both of those schemes. We made it very clear that if they voted in favor of the New Business Scheme, that we would ask the judge to sanction that one first. The New Business Scheme had a Fallback Solution within it, for the eventuality that we didn't meet the New Business Conditions under the New Business Scheme. And those conditions were that we started lending by the 26th of February of this year, and we completed the capital raise by the 26th of May this year.
As we announced this week, the board of Amigo Loans Ltd has decided that they expected us not to meet the capital raise within the time deadline, and therefore, we're obligated to trigger the switch into the Fallback Solution. That is what we have done this week.
The hidden condition is that once you've done the 119 for one raise, you had 10 days to pay the GBP 15 million over into the scheme pot. As we discussed, a little while back, raising GBP 15 million and putting it into the scheme pot, does not save the company.
Thank you. Just with iPhone, can we go to iPhone line, please?
I'll pass my question to Daniel, please.
Oh, he hasn't got his hands up. Can we go to Philip, please? Philip, I think you may need to unmute yourself.
Oh, God. Sorry about that. Yeah. Thanks for taking another question. I was thinking that taking on board everything everyone said about the likely likelihood of a new Scheme being approved and the timings and the money and all the rest of it, when the alternative isThe company ceasing to exist and everyone losing all their money. I honestly can't see why we wouldn't at least give it a go. I really don't. Surely it's better to give it a go and fail, and then I'll wear this than Robin saying it's gonna fail, so we won't bother. Honestly, I mean, I'd be happy to put money in to help cover the costs of putting the new Scheme together. You've already got an approved Scheme.
It would literally be you've got the computer system in place, where you ask the creditors for their vote, and you've got the template in place where you set up the council, which discussed it. All of that has already been done. It would just be changing that to the new Scheme. It's not like you're starting from ground zero with nothing at all in place. I don't think the cost would be astronomical to put together a new Scheme. I think this sounds like there's enough will here, just the people on this call to help contribute to that if need be. It's surely gotta be worth it. Even if it is likely not to succeed, it's surely gotta be worth it that people are willing to contribute rather than not bothering at all.
Surely it's gotta be. Thank you.
Putting aside the technicalities, if a new scheme was to be proposed and approved, and putting aside the costs, we still don't have certainty that we can raise the money required to fund the business in a go-forward basis. And we remain with the issue that there needs to be clear blue water between what people are getting in the fallback and the benefits of the new scheme. I'm not closed-minded to it. I just feel that the chances of arriving at the far end, or the uncertainties arriving at the far end are significant, very significant.
Yeah. You know, our estimates of the difference between the schemes was based on doing, the, you know, new scheme within the two months that we had. You know, based on the advice of council, you know, if that went into a full sort of five or six-month period, that difference would rise because we're still writing RewardRate loans, you know, during that period of time. You know, you're probably talking GBP 6 million or 7 million of scheme costs, capital raise costs, and, you know, RewardRate costs during that period of time, you know. You know, that's the amount of risk the creditors would have on top of, you know, what guarantee is there of the upside, depending upon the, you know, likelihood of success of a subsequent capital raise.
You know, that, you know, essentially becomes, you know, the problem. You know, it's a lot of money and it just wasn't available.
Can we go back to Chris? It's Chris Bourne's line, please.
Yeah. Hi there. Sorry. On that point, Danny, I mean, we were looking for GBP 45 million, where effectively 33 pence on the pound was going to address its liabilities with a GBP 15 million contribution. I think that was a lot of the reason why new investors were showing reluctance to jump on board.
Would you not agree that looking at it from a logical perspective, if we were to go and have the GBP 15 million that's gonna be put into the scheme with a successful capital raise, within the first 10 days, if that was amended to say that we could put the GBP 15 million over a period of time, that there's likeliness that the businesses would be more likely to raise those funds, where 100% of the raise would go to the future of the business. I think that was what the new investors' problem were. There was a third of the money that they were asking to raise would go towards his liabilities.
Where we could ask the creditors again to say, "Look, we're not trying to get out of paying this GBP 15 million. We just don't have it now." To come up with an arrangement of something similar to what Scheme One looked like, in terms of a percentage of profits or a capital commitment over a set amount of time. I'm aware in the business proposals that it's likely to hit a J-curve where profits aren't gonna be there. If the business survives, we could find those capital requirements from somewhere. There's no chance without any business at all.
We went through the same thought processes. We tried to figure out ways, and we spoke to the FCA, and actually, you know, put forward proposals in terms of, you know, equitizing or capitalizing GBP 15 million to be paid in other ways. The feedback that we got from the FCA, which was inconsistent with... If any of you have seen the letter that they have issued on the Morses scheme, where they said they were going to object to it for the same reasons. Any, you know, anything that doesn't provide absolute certainty, and, you know, lack of complexity. It needs to be simple, certain, and immediate, they're not gonna support.
You know, that seems to be their position consistently on absolutely everything at the moment. That is certainly what they fed back to us. We looked at options for, you know, debt, you know, in terms of we'll give them an IOU and pay you GBP 15 million, you know, over that period of time. Unfortunately, you know, we're leveraged up to the hilt on debt, in our business plan, and those debt providers wouldn't take kindly to having a ranking ahead of them. It would have to be effectively unsecured and ranking behind everything else, which wouldn't satisfy the court. We looked at equity and giving them shares, which will be sold in three years' time when they have some value. Again, there's no guarantee the business, you know, is successful from a creditor perspective.
There's no guarantee the business is successful, and therefore, those shares could be worthless. You know, it's a very complex transaction, and you're not going to get anything for three years. You know, we looked at doing it on a profit share, you know, it's the same issues. You know, it doesn't make money for the first two years and, you know, only a small amount of money in year three. It's into year four before you can really afford to pay anything. You're back to the same issues. We tried all of the same th... We absolutely empathize with, you know, all of your questions. We have tried the same things. We have pushed them with the FCA. We have pushed them with King's Counsel in terms of Can we do this? Can we do that?
You know, unfortunately, we have ended up in a position that, you know, ultimately, without the certainty of the amount of money that we can raise, you know, all of it looks weak. You know, even weaker than, you know, the other parts of the risk. You know, if, you know, if someone was sitting there with GBP 30 million and saying, "I can do everything apart from the GBP 15 million," we might have had a little bit more certainty, but we just didn't get there. You know, the two people. As I said before, the two people who said they would put in GBP 5 million, one of which was more certain than the other, both explicitly said they would not invest if any of it went to creditors. It was only to go to fund the new business.
That left us with the rights issue only, in effect, to try and do anything. It was, it was never gonna get anywhere near the amounts required, to fund the business.
Should we go to-
July.
Mike Hunt, please.
Yeah. Hi. Okay. I'd like to start off by saying that I am formally requesting a meeting, ideally face-to-face, but if not, on Zoom, with Daniel and with me and with Mo and with Chris, all present in front of you because I think that we need to have a proper discussion. I'm aware of the fact that this is ongoing. This is, you know, quite a long call.
I think it's appropriate on behalf of the shareholders, you know, to investigate and properly investigate and find out exactly what has happened up until now and what can be done now to approach the FCA and to approach the creditors committee and the High Court with a proposal to amend the current scheme, whether it is referred to as a new scheme or a simple amendment to the current scheme that can only benefit the creditors, patiently benefit the creditors, not be detrimental to the creditors. You know, I would like to sit down with you in order to discuss that properly. I would also like to think that we would get you to the point where you recognize the importance of adhering to the requirements of the MBS, you know, in going out with that rights issue. It's a requirement.
There are two requirements, the FCA allowing you to lend and going out to the shareholders with a share issue. It's a requirement. I don't think there can be any question about the logic of asking your shareholders how much money are you prepared to put in in order to keep your company alive.
Sadly in Fallback, the requirement lapsed. The New Business Scheme to survive required us to do it on a 19 for one issue. Can we take it offline about a meeting? I'm not averse to it, let's investigate how we can do that reasonably expeditiously. It's nearly 2:00. Can we take a couple more questions and then we should draw this to a close?
Let's go to EO please.
Yeah. Hi. I think, the feeling here is like you're being resigned rather than being a fighter. I guess you have plenty of people in the room there willing to help the business in a business model perspective, on a financial perspective. I think you're reluctant to accept any kind of help. That's what bothers me more because, you know, Mike, Daniel, all the people around here, myself included, are willing to invest in your business to let you go. In terms of your business model, you need to probably revise that, and you need to make amendments. We need to find a solution in order to get the creditors and above all the shareholders, implicatedOngoing.
What we need to do is find a solution between the company, the shareholders, and the creditors and all the after that, we can go to the court or the FCA and discuss with them with papers on, in our hands. That is where I think we need to tackle it. We need to tackle this from this moment on, 10 days, we need to tackle this immediate effect.
Okay.
Thank you.
We understand what you're saying. As I said, we will set about having a meeting with Mike and Daniel and the action groups, which will hopefully pick up the issues that you suggest. We've got time for one more question, I feel. Mark J.
Hi. Yeah. I think, you know, any action moving forward, I think you actually need to reach out to shareholders and get an opinion on what funds you could likely raise if you was to do an SOA 3. You could show that in court that you did an exercise similar to what we did as a creditor committee. I think you really have dropped the ball on reaching out to shareholders. You comment on you wouldn't know if what we could raise. There's indicative term sheets there that you could, you could use as a basis, you know, the GBP 15 million, whether that could be raised from shareholders or changed. I think you really need to do an exercise where you find out and get a ballpark figure of where that's likely to sit. You know, no one's asking for the 19 to one to be removed.
You know, two hours on the call, not one person has mentioned that. Everyone wants the company to survive. Really think you owe it to shareholders to do this one last thing.
I... So we understand. We will have this meeting. I'm gonna say, and we'll draw this to a close after two hours. Thank you for your time and your careful engagement. Please use our investor email line or investors@amigo.me. Kate will answer or pick it up and answer it. Please, please use that as a conduit in the meantime, if you have any other points and questions that you'd like to raise. I am personally devastated that we've got to this point. It was with extreme regret that we had to make this announcement. Thank you very much for your continued engagement and courtesy. That is the end of the today's call.