High profile financial planning firm Dixon Advisory has been holding meetings to comfort clients who have been victims of collapsed broker Lift Capital.
The firm’s managing director, Alan Dixon and the company’s founders, Daryl Dixon and Max Walsh have already held meetings in Sydney and Canberra.
Canberra-based Dixon Advisory has $2.5 billion of funds under advice, and around $25 million of it is trapped with Lift because it is in voluntary administration.
“There have been client meetings in recent days,” Dixon Advisory spokesman Alan Deans told InvestorDaily.
“From what I understand the response to that has been quite positive, they have been grateful that Dixon has been acting on their behalf and accept that there is a strong possibility that they will get their securities or their money back.”
Lift went into voluntary administration on April 10 and Merrill Lynch, the broker’s secured creditor has been fire-selling $650 million of Lift’s stock to replenish the money it lent.
Dixon Advisory tried obtaining an injunction against Merrill Lynch but failed.
At a creditors’ meeting in Sydney on April 22 it was revealed that the broker’s administrator, McGrathNicol, may only be able to retrieve 50 cents in the dollar for most investors but it would vary as the procedure is complex.
At the meeting, financial planners vented their frustration at Merrill Lynch because it initiated the firesale and allegedly never gave anybody a warning that Lift’s liquidity cushion was under immense pressure.
“If they [Merrill] had stopped to consider their position and that of other creditors, they could have come to a much better outcome by simply requesting all investors urgently refinance with another margin lender, which could have been easily achieved within two to three weeks,” Alan Dixon said after the meeting.
