Over twenty-four thousand investors of the First Fund Investors Association have issued a two- week ultimatum to new fund managers, TTL Capital, to pay their locked-up funds of about GHS170 million or face their wrath.
According to them, they have not been paid for the past 2 years.
Addressing the media during a press conference, the spokesperson for the First Fund Investors Association, Michael Kwablah called on the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, to as a matter of urgency intervene and retrieve 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 for them to start the process. On April 26th they sent us a message stating that the meeting has been cancelled.
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,” he said.
He further noted that have written to the Board of Directors through the Fund Manager, but they were unsuccessful.
“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.,” he added.
It will be recalled that the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) in November 2019, revoked the licenses of 53 fund management companies due to various breaches including the non-payment of clients’ funds totalling GHS8 Billion.
In its quest to rectify the situation and 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, 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.
Per the SEC update, directors of six Mutual Funds including FirstFund, then operated by First Banc Financial Services, announced TTL Capital as new managers for the defunct First Fund Limited.