Award for coldest sham goes to...
Never trust a cold-calling company trying to flog you investments, even if it claims to be award winning.
Worldwide Commodity Partners Ltd was named Fastest Growing Broker in 2012 by some obscure publication called World Finance and its “senior emissions analyst” James Burn picked up the gong.
At the time, I questioned how this company could be judged the fastest growing anything since it was so new that it hadn’t filed any accounts and its supposed headquarters around the corner from the Bank of England was a virtual office.
Worldwide Commodity Partners, you won’t be surprised to hear, was a sham. It sold carbon credits, those investments much loved by con men, raking in almost £3million before being put into compulsory liquidation in the High Court.
Director Stephen Leary, a 32-year-old Londoner, has just been disqualified from running companies for 14 years – only one year less than the maximum ban.
Another company given an award by World Finance was Tullett Brown Ltd, which made £3.2m by selling carbon credits to the unwary before being shut down.
I asked World Finance how it selects winners but never got a reply.