The administrator and official liquidator of Money Markets International Stockbrokers Ltd (MMI), which is in liquidation, has identified 89 eligible investors who have "cash claims" for monies held in MMI's client bank account in a draft interim statement, a High Court judge noted yesterday.
Ms Justice Laffoy granted liberty to the administrator, Mr Tom Kavanagh, to deliver his interim report to both the Investor Compensation Company Ltd and the Central Bank.
The judge noted the administrator was not yet in a position to furnish a definitive statement of the names of all eligible investors and of the net loss of each investor. Neither was he able to definitively say at this stage what the "compensatable" loss was of each such investor.
Under the terms of the 1998 Investor Compensation Act, compensatable loss is defined as 90 per cent of an investor's net loss or €20,000, whichever is the lesser.
Yesterday, Ms Justice Laffoy said Mr Kavanagh's difficulty was that he was not in a position at this juncture to calculate "net loss" in relation to eligible investors because questions had arisen in relation to the precise liability of MMI to each client.
The judge said these questions were the subject of applications for direction to the High Court in the course of the winding up, and included issues such as the operation of set-offs within MMI, stamp duty refunds and the trading of fully paid-for stocks in margin trading by MMI in respect of US securities.
In March last, Mr Kavanagh, after hotly contested proceedings, discontinued a High Court action against seven former directors of MMI alleging fraud. The allegations were strongly denied.
Later, Mr Kavanagh refused to apologise for instituting the proceedings which, according to one calculation, cost MMI creditors £1 million (€1.27 million).
