One of the first casualties from the January 15 Swiss Franc spike was Boston Prime, the FX prime brokerage arm of Forex IT and technology company Boston Technologies. Boston Prime was declared bankrupt on January 27, unable to collect on money it was owed while itself owing traders and brokerages who were on the right side of the CHF spike.
It has taken almost a full year to sort things out, but special administrator Rollings Oliver is getting set to move forward with refunds of client money held at Boston Prime. But it will still take a little while.
Rollings Oliver has posted a notice on its website, as well as in today’s Financial Times (see at right), that any client claims are due by January 5, 2016. Rollings Oliver expects to make final distributions to clients within four months of that date – i.e. by early May 2016.
How much clients will actually get back, however, is still unclear.
Based on the most recent disclosure made by Rollings Oliver, the expected claims will total about £11.7 million, while after expenses there is cash of about £4.1 million to distribute. Meaning, that Boston Prime clients should expect to receive about 35 cents on the dollar.
Certain eligible Boston Prime clients will be able to also receive compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) to make up the deficit, but only up to £50,000 per client. Note that there is no such FSCS claim available to professional clients, only to eligible ‘retail’ clients of Boston Prime.