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A couple accused of receiving about £24mn from London Capital & Finance and using it to fund a lavish lifestyle — including luxury travel, jewellery and membership of a Mayfair member’s club — have reached a settlement with administrators of the failed UK investment firm.
Simon and Helen Hume-Kendall had been accused in High Court proceedings of benefiting from a “Ponzi scheme” that extracted funds from 11,600 investors in one of the country’s biggest retail savings scandals of recent years.
Court papers show that the Hume-Kendalls reached a settlement earlier this month with administrators to LCF, who have brought a civil case against multiple individuals connected with the collapse.
Simon Hume-Kendall chaired London Oil & Gas, the main company that LCF lent money to before its collapse in 2019.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The administrators’ case against other defendants, including the firm’s former chief executive Michael “Andy” Thomson, is ongoing and proceedings are scheduled to continue next week.
LCF raised about £237mn from investors, promising returns of up to 8 per cent through so-called minibonds. Its collapse triggered criminal and regulatory investigations as well as an inquiry into the Financial Conduct Authority’s supervision of the company.
Lawyers acting for the claimants have alleged that LCF had been “a Ponzi scheme from the outset”, using “new investors’ monies to pay returns to existing investors”.
Lawyers acting for the couple said that Simon Hume-Kendall “was not a director of LCF . . . in the period since 2015 when the alleged Ponzi scheme is said to have been planned and executed”, according to written defence arguments.
They added that “no accusation of specific knowledge of or participation in deliberate wrongdoing is made” against Helen Hume-Kendall and that the administrators’ case against her had “manifest deficiencies”.
The couple’s legal team said LCF’s collapse was a “tragedy” but that the litigation “has not been the proper way to wind up the affairs of LCF and London Oil & Gas”.
The firm’s administrators, represented by Mishcon de Reya, said in written arguments that the couple received at least £23.9mn from LCF and spent “large sums” on luxury travel and dining at exclusive restaurants.
They said Simon Hume-Kendall acquired lifetime membership of the club Annabel’s at a cost of £250,000, made donations to the Conservative party and acquired property.
Lawyers acting for Thomson told the court at the start of the proceedings last month that he denied “every claim against him”.
In written submissions they said that LCF “did not engage in any illegitimate business activities . . . It carried on a legitimate business which involved raising money through the issuance of bonds and the lending of those monies in bona fide transactions on commercial terms.”
