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Monday, 20 June 2016

Margate Dreamland's New Owner? Some Questions Need Answering

Arrowgrass Master Fund Ltd has lent Sands Heritage £600,000 to help to pay off its debts.  If Sands Hertiage fails to repay the Arrowgrass loan  Arrowgrass will take over the 100 year lease of the Dreamland Amusement Park.

According to its documentation Arrowgrass specialises in high risk investments including investing in companies facing administration, bankruptcy and liquidation. – more later

Arrowgrass Master Fund is registered in the Cayman Islands tax haven and does not pay UK Taxes. According to a document published in September 2015 Arrowgrass Master Fund is owned by  Arrowgrass Capital Partners LLP which is based in London.  Arrowgrass Capital Partners LLP is   owned by Nicholas Graham Niell.  Mr Neill is  Arrowgrass’  Chief Investment Officer and  owns greater than 50% of Arrowgrass UK.

Mr Neil  appears to be the same the Nicholas Graham Neill  who was until July 2010 a director of a company called Lifescan Limited. Also a Director of Lifescan Lts at the same time as Mr Neill was Mr John Peter Anthony Adams who is also currently a director of Sands Heritage Limited along wth Mr Nick Connington.

The link between a director of Sands Heritage and a director Arrowgrass Capital Partners LLP, which  is  lending Sands £600,000, may be co-incidental, or perhaps its a case of business pals helping each other out. But whatever the relationship might be Mr Connington and Mr Adams of Sands Heritage should make an immediate statement about whether or not they have any financial interests in Arrowgrass Master Fund Ltd or any other related company as it would be highly improper to be investing a in  company which is rescuing your own struggling company. 

Most reasonable people would agree that making a profit by investing in a company which has come to your financial rescuer is not ethical   I think they call it a conflict of interest.

The people of Thanet, who have invested at least £7million in Dreamland,  have a right to know if the Dreamland operator, Sands Heritage, is behaving ethically in its business  dealings. A declaration about financial links with Arrowgrass would I am sure put this matter to rest? 

UPDATE my colleagues Ed Targett & Louise Oldfield have have advised my that me Nick Connington worked as fund manager for Arrowgrass!

We therefore have a situation whereby the 2 directors of Sands Heritage have very strong connections with the company who's Cayman Island based investment fund in  lending them £600,000 to pay off their debts. This is a very unusual situation which much be examined extremely carefully.

3 comments:

  1. more dodgy dealings, well unearthed Ian

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  2. The £2.9M debt seems to be wrong. That was the amount they owed at the time they entered the CVA. My understating is under the CVA they run up another £2M of debt and of course they have the £600,000 they owe the Cayman Island company and I would say it is probably they have run up more debt during the administration

    It appears they have found no one willing to take on Dreamland which really only leaves the option of liquidating the company. The winners in this appear to be Arrow Grass. Why the administrators approved this deal I do not know. It would be something for the creditors to ask. So the only real asset of Sands goes to the Cayman Island company whilst everyone else will be lucky to get anything with the debts that would appear to be £5.6M

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  3. In my view the Dreamland Trust do not come out of this well neither. They seemed to be quick to walk away from the mess once Dreamland collapsed. Quite what the real roll of the Dreamland Trust is now is far from clear. Well give it is now certain to close does it have a role at all. Its Web site is pretty much not updated and almost nothing is heard from them

    This whole sorry mess is a prime example of how not to go about a project. In my view they had no proper project plan or time scales or budget and no clue as to what Dreamland was to deliver. No proper market research appeared to have been carried out. Nor did they have any real idea of the target customer. A few ~Roller coaster fans was not going to deliver a viable project. Millions have been wasted because of this. Millions Margate could ill afford to lose

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