IFA online

By Katrina Baugh

Lifemark, one of the life settlements groups behind Keydata, could be facing liquidation after US hedge fund CarVal pulled a $60m rescue offer.

CarVal entered a six-week exclusivity period with Luxembourg-based Lifemark last month to try and thrash out a deal but this has failed, according to the Life Settlements Wire.

 It had already stumped up £3.5m in short-term loans to Lifemark, which ran bonds backing Keydata plans owned by 23,000 customers who invested £350m.

Commentary by Michael Abraham:

Having been involved in the liquidation of a fund I can certainly empathize with the statement that a cash injection is better than liquidation!  Unfortunately a liquidator does just that – liquidate – and assets are sold at less than their value with the additional cost of the liquidator themselves.  What is actually needed in these cases is often just good structured management over time to allow the assets to mature.  But this will not happen because regulators and liquidators want to move on and not need to continually deal with harassed investors!  Cynical but true. 

http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/ifaonline/news/1724528/lifemark-usd60m-rescue-loan-withdrawn-reports

Published on 16 Aug 2010 at 06:07 am