Lewis Securities outcome still in the balance
The administrators of Sydney-based bond dealer Lewis Securities are still working on sorting out the company’s financial position, Jirsch Sutherland senior partner Rod Sutherland said.
The dealer went into administration late last month, which was partly due to the mortgage fund freeze and the problems with Allco paper.
Lewis has been a strong support of Allco paper as a dealer and in the two high-yield fixed interest funds the dealer established.
While the first fund held a wide array of listed debentures and fixed interest securities, the performance of the fund was poor delivering negative returns.
While redemptions on the funds had been met up until late October, Money Management understands there were concerns about meeting future redemption requests.
Sutherland said the exact number of clients and investors with Lewis was unknown at this stage.
“We are in the process of sorting out the final position of the company at the point of administration,” he told Money Management.
“The investor’s funds are protected at this stage and we are not trading the company so there are no new investors.”
A creditor meeting was held last week and Sutherland expects the next one to be postponed because of the ongoing task of collating all the information.
“The next meeting is scheduled in about a month’s time, but I suspect this will be postponed,” he said.
“It is too early to look at what the future of the company will be but obviously we will be looking at trade sales or a deed to work the company out of administration.”
Lewis was established in 1985 and operated as a fixed interest specialist.
It had also been running individual managed accounts (IMAs) for clients and these had been affected by the stock market’s downward spiral this year.
Lewis Securities’ founder Tony Lewis declined to comment on the situation when contacted by Money Management saying only that he was working with the administrators on the company’s situation.
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