Probe as TV guru’s eco home scheme leaves investors reeling
THE bosses behind TV property guru Kevin McCloud’s eco homes business have launched a formal investigation into the way the high-risk investment was managed.
Small investors who sank millions of pounds into the grand designs presenter’s company, Happiness Architecture Beauty (HAB), stand to lose up to 97 per cent of their money.
Now the company is looking into the way the investment – which promised to deliver returns of up to 9 per cent a year – was handled.
Private investors who put in £2.4million were told they could lose between 74 and 97 per cent of their money in the worst-case scenario.
Another group of investors who put £1.9million into HAB in 2013 have not received any money back despite being promised a 5 per cent dividend.
Investors reacted with anger at the revelations. gill Mascord, 64, from Woodplumpton, Lancashire, who pumped in £3,000 said she was ‘shocked’ to learn of the internal investigation.
She said: ‘I haven’t heard anything from Kevin McCloud at all, he certainly hasn’t written to all the investors to say what’s happening. I’m not so wealthy that I can just forget about that sum of money.’
A representative of another investor told the guardian: ‘None of the 650 investors have received a penny in dividends or have even been allowed the opportunity to sell their shares in order to reclaim any of their investment... Many are left feeling angry and betrayed.’
McCloud did not respond to requests for comment, but in a letter to some investors he reportedly said: ‘I wish I had been less reliant on the executive team over the years – in whom I placed my trust and took counsel from. I placed my faith in past management in the belief the business would be run well.’