Not such a sweet deal for Hotel Chocolat investors

A DECISION to pay back £6.4m of bonds left a sour taste for Hotel Chocolat investors – because they’ll no longer be sent boxes of chocs.

Savers had snapped up bonds issued in 2010 and 2014 that paid out interest in the form of up to 12 boxes of chocolate a year instead of cash.

The firm had used the money raised to open shops and an overseas expansion.

But yesterday Hotel Chocolat said it had enough cash to stand on its own two feet and has written cheques to 1,700 bondholders who each ploughed in £2,000 or £4,000 years ago.

Investors have got back what they put in and will no longer get their boxes of chocolate.

Disappointed bondholder Peter McDermott wrote on Twitter: ‘Gutted the chocolate bonds are being repaid and the return will come to an end.

‘It’s been great fun and I would have preferred to have made the decision to withdraw when it suited.’

Ex-bondholders will still be looked after, however, including through special offers to visit the company’s cocoa estate in St Lucia in the Caribbean, which their cash helped support.

The company said the bonds also helped it create 600 jobs in the UK, plough £10m into its factory in Huntingdon, Cambridge, and open 70 stores.