LeapRate Exclusive… In response to the many comments on LeapRate article, as well as emails and calls we’ve received from (former) clients of Alpari UK, LeapRate has put together a formal petition on behalf of Alpari UK clients, who want their money refunded by the Special Administrator KPMG as soon as possible.
The feeling among many Alpari UK clients, it seems, is that the administrators are not necessarily working to refund client money as soon as is practicably possible, instead focusing on trying to sell the company and/or some of its key assets. Worthy goals as well, but not necessarily putting first the interests of clients whose money remains stuck in administration.
The petition now has more than 240 names on it, and was presented directly to the KPMG Administrators Samantha Bewick, Richard Heis, and Mark Firmin, as well as to the FCA.
We received a call back very soon after from Samantha Bewick, who made it very clear that:
- the administrators are indeed working as fast as possible to sort out all client balance amounts, noting that with 100,000+ clients the process will take some time before money can actually be refunded to clients
- the work that the KPMG team is doing to try to salvage certain assets (intellectual property, licenses, client lists, IT, etc.) is not being done at the expense of client interests, nor is it delaying in any way their work to sort out final client balances.
Essentially, the message the Administrators conveyed to us was that they understand and are sympathetic to the position Alpari UK clients are in, and that they are doing everything they can and are working as fast and as diligently as possible to be able to effect a refund to clients as soon as possible within the next few weeks. But clients need to have some patience, given the large number of clients involved.
We’ll continue to monitor the situation as it develops.