Sunday, Jul 05, 2009
'Yes, it was crazy money to a layman, but this is property. It was like that.'
Mail: Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey explain how they lost £130m in the blink of an eye
Grant goes on to tell me me that it took £19million to get his property company Imagine off the ground. Where on earth does a man with a horsebox get that sort of money? '£1million I raised myself; £18million was borrowed from the bank,' is the answer. Wasn't that crazy money - both to be lending, and borrowing?
Posted by confused76 @ 09:04 AM (1004 views) Add Comment
7 Comments
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1. cyril said...
and people moan about civil servants
2. techieman said...
"All five of his companies went under, leaving debts of £50million. 'It went like that,' he says, clicking his fingers and making a little 'pfff' sound.
"
and
"This beautiful house is proof of that. It was never secured on his businesses, so was never going to disappear alongside his millions.
And many of the millions that he took out of the company over the years went into its refurbishment - a cool £3.5million, in fact. "
and
"This means that the house they couldn't afford to keep has sold for a whopping £10million, leaving them with a £4.5million profit. "
and
"Let's be honest, I was a victim in all this. The bank were alongside us. In fact, the more the company grew - and it did grow fast - the more I was coming under pressure from them to expand more quickly.
and
'I mean, these are the experts and not once did anyone say: "Whoa!" In fact, they wanted more.'I was voted runner-up in Entrepreneur of the Year, for goodness' sake.
and
"Would offering to repay their creditors out of the humungous profits of this house be completely insane? Yes, apparently.
'Well, who would do that?' says Grant. 'Who would fund a business debt from their private purse? It would be madness. "
and sadly
"And everything is relative, isn't it? We have friends who live in places far bigger than this. This place would look like a cottage to some of them."
Yes Anthea its a wicked wicked world isn't it when you have to lose your home and trade down to a £6m mansion because the market didn't do what you thought. Ah the price of failure :-).
3. icarus said...
techie - yep, that's the secret. What you take from investors becomes a very large salary/bonus and administrators can't touch your "private purse". I believe Adam Smith questioned limited liability on these grounds.
Anthea the wonderful homemaker? Who else does the vacuum cleaning in high heels?
And who's paying for their new place? The debt daisy chain goes: Bovey - HBOS - Lloyds - Taxpayer
4. little professor said...
How on earth have they been able to afford to buy a £6million home even after their companies went bust?
5. charlie brooker said...
'Yes, it was crazy money to a layman, but this is property. It was like that.'
When people think that craziness is the new sanity its time to ask "stop the world, I want to get off."
6. guiriduro said...
Yep. Personally I think if you are going to exist in a Panglossian system where you allow fiat money and ever expanding securitised derivative debt money creation, the least you should do is allow everyone to have a phantom legal person (an LTD Co) to take the rap if it all goes tits up.
Sadly, it seems this is only available to the most venal and undeserving of human detritus.
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