Rebus Investment Solutions is acting on behalf of a number of “premiership and ex-premiership footballers to target financial advisers who advised them to invest in unregulated collective investment schemes.
Rebus said the schemes involved are currently under the spotlight of the HMRC and include Eclipse 35, a film partnership scheme promoted by advisors Future Capital Partners and a number of film sale & leaseback schemes promoted by Ingenious Media.
According to FTAdviser sister title the Financial Times, there could be as many as 12 footballers pursuing their financial advisers for around £14m in losses.
Research from Rebus, a claims management business which looked at data over the past 15 years, found that more than 200 players invested over £1bn in Ucis funds. The biggest single investment was £12m.
A spokesperson for Rebus said: “To clarify, the claims are against the advisers who sold the schemes rather than the schemes themselves.”
Rebus said that in particular, the question of what might happen should HMRC deem them inappropriate vehicles later “appears to have gone unmentioned”.
A spokesperson for Rebus said: “We are seeing an increasing number of such schemes, sold to investors as legitimate investment products, being shut down by HMRC if they are deemed to be aggressive tax avoidance schemes.
“Which makes them hardly an appropriate mechanism for footballers looking to protect their longer-term financial future.
“In some cases, investors can find themselves having to pay back all of the interest and tax relief they have received, in addition to penalties. They are also liable to service the leverage which is usually on a full recourse basis.
“In some instances, people can end up owing three or five times their original investment, many years afterwards.”
Last year the now defunct Financial Services Authority proposed a ban on selling such schemes to retail investors after it discovered that hundreds of schemes had made losses.
