Tory donor at heart of £237m savings scandal
Cash ploughed into helicopters, stables and a Cape Verde holiday resort
FROM shipping sales in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia to investments in English wine, Simon Hume-Kendall has always had an eye for a deal.
And no-one is fonder of talking up this business acumen than the 65year-old himself – boasting of past triumphs to his local paper in Tunbridge Wells, and forever proposing grand plans to transform his corner of Kent.
But when he next holds forth on his many successes, the Tory donor may wish to skate over the disaster unfolding at trading firm London Capital & Finance.
LCF collapsed this year owing £237m to the 11,500 ordinary savers who it had persuaded to invest their nest eggs.
When administrators Smith & Williamson began pulling apart the firm’s books to look for the missing cash, they found a convoluted web of business interests, stretching from Cornish holiday cottages and property in Cape Verde, to a racing stables and even a helicopter. And Hume- Kendall is allegedly at the centre of it all.
Christine Anderson, a surf instructor in Devon who gave money to LCF and is nursing huge losses as a result, said: ‘They were very plausible. This money was supposed to have been given to hundreds of start-ups, but instead it seems to have flowed into just a few companies.’
Hume-Kendall has enjoyed a long and successful career, starting as a shipping insurer in the City before taking control of his own business in the 1980s, and then helping former Soviet countries upgrade their fleets.
He once threatened to sue novelist Jeffrey Archer for libel after detecting a reference he believed to refer to himself in one of Archer’s short stories about a shady scrap metal dealer. Hume-Kendall claimed the story was written out of spite over a misplaced belief he was having an affair with Archer’s mistress.
Since the 1990s he has become one of the fixers and money men who grease the wheels of finance.
As a former director of Crystal Palace Football Club, he tried to take it over when it ran into financial difficulties in 1999.
He was a central figure in the revival of English wine, helping to launch the award-winning Chapel Down vineyard and playing a key role in its flotation in 2003.
Hume-Kendall was later chairman of a company which took over the Daily Sport newspaper, in an unusual transaction which saw the Sport pay a £1m fee to a separate company with which he was also connected.
Other ventures have included aborted plans for a new Kent football stadium, hotels and buying Bewl Water trout fishery at a lake near his sprawling country home. And he was one of the founders of oil explorer Burren Energy, which was sold for £1.8bn in 2008.
The father-of-three has donated £60,000 to the Tories and was once chairman of the Tunbridge Wells Conservative Association. Last year he gave £5,000 to the constituency of Tory MP Amber Rudd.
Hume-Kendall, who once said one of his proudest achievements was being named Kent Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008, set LCF up under a different name in 2012. He resigned the following year and it later passed to Andy Thomson, a former employee at one of his other interests.
LCF was then renamed and quickly began marketing itself aggressively, offering savers returns of as much as 8pc. It said cash would be invested in a taxfree Isa, and lent to small businesses through ‘mini-bonds’. In fact, the money went to just 12 firms, ten of which were described by the administrators as ‘ not independent’ from LCF.
A total of £124m went to London Oil and Gas, a firm controlled by Hume-Kendall and Elten Barker, who lives near the businessman and is said to drink with him in the same pub.
This London Oil and Gas cash was lent out again, mostly to firms in the energy industry, with £12m put towards a holiday resort in Cape Verde, off the coast of west Africa. Administrators said that his was one of the transactions which looked ‘highly suspicious’.
A separate £70.1m went towards three other holiday developments – two in the Dominican Republic and another in Cornwall – owned at the time by Hume-Kendall, Barker and Thomson.
They have since been sold to an unconnected company, Prime Resort Development.
Sources said Prime could seek fresh funding which would allow some money to be recovered.
Another £12.6m went to one of Hume-Kendall’s other associates, Spencer Golding, who is disqualified from serving as a director involving holiday timeshares, and put towards running a stables with 50 horses.
Part of Golding’s ban was for serving as a director when his bankruptcy in 2006 prohibited it.
But he now lives a wealthy lifestyle in Kent and flies around in his own helicopter.
And £840,000 went to London Financial Group, LCF’s parent firm, and was used by Thomson to buy a separate helicopter. It is claimed he wanted to sell the aircraft immediately for a quick profit but a deal fell through.
Administrators have asked Hume-Kendall, Barker, Golding and Thomson to cough up what they owe. The first two have agreed to do so but no response has been received from Golding and Thomson.
Savers expect to get back just 20pc, which in many cases was their entire life savings. The Serious Fraud Office is investigating and has made four arrests.
As for Hume-Kendall, he is left with a mess that will overshadow even that Entrepreneur of the Year award.