Glentham Capital - Nicola Horlick's crowdfunded disaster - update

Nicola Horlick's daughter Alice recently got married to Nathan Engelbrecht. Around the same time, Nicola transferred a chunk of her shares in disfunctional Glentham Capital to Nathan and her brother. A wedding present perhaps?

We have written a lot about Nicola Horlick and the Glentham Fund - here. It used Seers to raise over £400k a few years back and has done nothing since except spent it. 

It seems someone bought £250k of new shares in Glenthan in April of 2017. This is the amount Nicola Horlick owed the company. She had said it would not be paid in to buy more equity. But she appears to be new owner of 20k shares.

Alice runs Aevha - a company that used Crowdcube to raise £150k in 2015. Alice's then boyfriend and now husband is also a director. Accounts are due out next month and they are supposed to show the company in profit. New money was raised recently, which wasnt in the projections but without which the company would have been struggling. Strange increases in 'other reserve fund' are unexplained in the last accounts. Bottom line is very thin. 

Glenthan Capital itself seems to be pointless. It made another £150k loss for YE Dec17 and has no money. The fund it was intended to set up, is very reluctant to come out and be seen.

What's next - anyone's guess but I wouldnt expect it to be too good. 

More Horlicks?

Nicola Horlick's Glentham Capital has come in for more than its far share of bad press. Recent reports state that the £250k she had promised the invest via Seedrs has now been paid in - meaning Seedrs do not have to follow through on their threat of legal action. Whoever thought they would? Companies House shows no new investment.

Glentham is now based in the US. There they have been trying to raise $125m since December 2016 via a platform called Castle Placement. The IP includes claims that Glentham has an exceptional team with a proven track record of building similar asset based platforms. Gone are the days when Glentham was focused on the film sector - it now intends to makes $1m-$10m loans to US lower middle market businesses.

One of the well established team is clearly Holick but what isnt made clear is that another member of the team is also a Horlick - well its Nicola's husband Martin Baker. Nothing like keeping it in the family. People might wish to critically review the term success when it comes to track records.

We will let you know if the paperwork for the £250k ever appears.

Seedrs takes legal action against the Superwoman known as Nicola Horlick

Have Nicola's Crows eventually come home to Roost. 

Nicola Horlick has become embroiled in a new scandal - clearly she has missed them.

She was involved in a Seedrs raise for her Glentham Capital vehicle and had committed to putting in a missing £250k that had been promised in the pitch. This money has never materialised and Seedrs have run out of patience. We broke this story about Nicola sometime ago and have been keeping you up to date with developments - see here

So we wait to see what happens next. 

That Glentham Fund is a right Horlicks

Glentham Fund, run by the Capo di Tutti Capi and media star, Nicola Horlicks,  has raised money a number of times on Seedrs. To date the company has done nothing and has raised little if any of the promised £50m investment fund. 

In the last raise, which we wrote about here, Nicola Horlick stated that there was an investment of £250k from an external investor, that had already been agreed. This money has never materialised. 

Geoff Lynn, Seedrs CEO, when questioned in October 2015 by The Evening Standard, stated that the money would be in place by the end of the year. He is quoted as saying that he was not worried because ''Nicola will be putting the money in herself if for any reason the external investor falls through''. http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anthony-hilton-nicola-horlicks-film-investment-vehicle-is-making-slowmotion-progress-a3084996.html

Not only has the Glentham Fund done nothing since its inception - except totally change its MO and spend its £393k equity cash, but the assurance of its CEO and founder is, more than a year later, looking a little flimsy. As is the forceful statement issued by Jeff Lynne in October 2015.

We wrote to Jeff but he was out, so passed us onto his PRing. She wrote back today - 

'Thank you for your email Rob. 

As nominee shareholder on behalf of the Seedrs investors we are comprehensively dealing with this matter and are keeping the investors up to date throughout this process. 

We are in the middle of working through a solution so I don't feel it's appropriate to get into our private discussions at this stage. 

Best wishes,

Lucy

Lucy Sharp

PR & Communications Director | Seedrs'

Thing is Lucy, we only got to hear about this because one of your investors contacted us yesterday saying that Horlicks had not paid the money; despite Seedrs chasing her all year for it. Seedrs had emailed shareholders to tell them this. Maybe that is what Lucy means by 'comprehensively dealing'? He was clearly not impressed, which is why he came to us.  

Maybe Seedrs should be stumping up the cash as they were the ones who promoted the whole scheme in the first place? The only people suffering here are those who were stupid enough to believe what was in the Seedrs Glentham Fund pitch. As we are repeatedly told that these Seedrs people are sophisticated investors, it has to have been quite a comprehensive misdirection that persuaded them to part with their cash.

In the end the lack of the £250k matters not a jot, as the whole scheme has been a farce from the start. There is no fund and therefore there is no business. 

 

So how is Nicola Horlick's Glentham Fund doing?

Nicola Horlick's Glenthan Fund raised £150k on Seedrs in July 2013.

This is from the pitch - 

Glentham Capital would receive a management fee of 2% per annum. If $100 million is raised, the annual revenue of the company would therefore be $2 million.

3 years later and the company has achieved very little - if anything, The film fund it was set up to raise of $100m is as far as we know empty and cancelled. As are the company coffers, with the latest (late) filed accounts showing an overall deficit and losses of the year of £200k. 

We have written about this before - Seedrs also commented that Horlick had guaranteed to replace £250k into the company this year - http://fantasyequitycrowdfunding.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=+glentham but there is no evidence that this has happened that we could find.

Anyone got clue what is going on here?

Glentham Fund Chapter II

Following our previous post on the Glentham fund, we have been contacted by the Seedrs platform.

Firstly we would like to thank the platform for taking the time to respond and to congratulate them on reaching £100m in funded pitches. And yes we know you are not Crowdcube!

So, Glentham.

It now appears that Nicola Horlick will come good on her promise to replace the £250k of external funding - in fact it may well be there as we write. She has in any case re confirmed that she is covering it. Although it's not going into equity; so there was no need for Seedrs' investors to protect against dilution. 

Rather oddly, this investment has now become about a completely different venture. Despite writing in the Seedrs pitch that the film fund 

''Appetite from pre-marketing efforts has been strong and the initial target raise of US$100 million has been raised to US$250 million.''

The film fund has been shunted into a siding and makes way for a new US SME loans fund. 

Call us old fashioned but if we had invested in a film fund we would expect to see a film fund. But we must be out of step with the modern world. 

The film fund will come apparently, but only after the SME loan fund, which is due to close in two weeks with in excess of $100m in its chest. Apparently it was too difficult to set up a Film Fund. 

Like a good book,  this company keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, not knowing with any certainty what will happen next. We look forward to Chapter III.  

Some night time reading with a nice cup of ...................

Glentham Capital Ltd raised two separate amounts on the Seedrs platform in 2013 and 2014, totalling around £350k. The business was established to raise and run arts and film funds. It's main claim to fame is that it is the brain child of supermum Nicola Horlick.

According to the Evening Standard  http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anthony-hilton-nicola-horlicks-film-investment-vehicle-is-making-slowmotion-progress-a3084996.html the company spent all but £60k of this money without much success. So far, the company set up to create and manage funds, has no fund. As far back as July 2014 investors were getting a little shirty with the slow progress; who knows what they feel now. In October 2015 Horlick confirmed that she was expecting the fund to close at £50m in March this year.

The company returned to Seedrs in January 2015 and successfully raised another £36k. This was on the back of a promise in the pitch that a £250k single investment had already been agreed with an external investor; so current shareholders were being given their pre emption rights.

So where is this £250k investment? Well as of filings today at CH, it has not arrived. It's over a year late - what you might call a late bloomer.

Geoff Lynn, Seedrs CEO,  when questioned in October 2015 by the paper, stated that the money would be in place by the end of the year. He is quoted as saying that he was not worried because ''Nicola will be putting the money in herself if for any reason the external investor falls through''.

Time to pay up or we might all think this shows signs of being a bit of a horlicks.

Thanks go to our friend for the tip off.