The customers of TTL Capital have held a press conference to call on the Security and Exchange Commission to as a matter of urgency come to their aid to help retrieve their locked-up capital.
More than twenty-four thousand investors of the First Fund Investors Association have issued a two- week ultimatum to new fund managers, TTL Capital, to demand that they pay their locked-up funds of about GHS170 million or face their wrath.
The Progress Made So Far
The spokesperson for the First Fund Investors Association, Mr. Michael Kwabla, addressing the media during a press conference in Accra yesterday, June 10, 2021. He registered his displeasure with the way TTL Capital seem not to be attaching any urgency to the payment of their funds.
“We were given to a new fund manager TTL in January 2020 and they have been lethargic ever since. We don’t actually see any improvement. We held a meeting in September 2020 where we passed an ordinary resolution, withholding redemptions and giving them up to 6 months to operationalize the fund. So, we had a message from them that the meeting will be held on April 28th, 2020 for them to start the process. On April 26th, 2020, they sent us a message stating that the meeting has been cancelled”.
Michael Kwabla,
“We feel that they don’t take us serious. So, this is the first step to recover our monies. We are giving the board two weeks to call a meeting, operationalize the fund, give us about 60 percent of our investment, and provide us with a plan on how to get the other 40 percent. We are also urging the SEC to intervene and retrieve our funds.”
Michael Kwabla
Moreover, the association is requesting the managers of the fund to furnish them with information on the current status of their funds and its performance. Meanwhile, he indicated that all efforts to reach the Board of Directors through the Fund Manager proved futile.
“We need information on the status of the Fund including the performance of the fund and status of reconciliation which we understand has been ongoing since March 2020. Till date neither management nor the board had communicated the date for the next meeting nor the reasons for previous meeting postponements. We have even written several letters to the Board of Directors through the Fund Manager, but they were unsuccessful.”
Michael Kwabla
The Reason behind the Revocation of Licenses
It will be recalled that, the Securities and Exchange Commission, in it’s quest to strengthen the security market to promote the orderly growth and development of an efficient, fair and transparent securities market in which investors and the integrity of the market are protected, revoked the licenses of 53 fund management companies due to various breaches including the non-payment of clients’ funds totaling GHS8 Billion in November, 2019.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year, published a list of 13 Collective Investment Schemes comprising 11 Mutual Funds and two Unit Trusts to appoint new fund managers by their respective boards following the revocation of their licenses. An update from SEC indicated that directors of six of the mutual funds announced TTL Capital as their new manager. This includes, FirstFund Capital which was then operated by First Banc Financial Services.
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