Our Case Studies

950k settled for 150k with assistance of pension funds

FACTS

Our clients as a property developer was a victim of the 2008 financial crash and the bank were pursuing our clients for £950k undertow personal guarantees.

Although there were some areas for dispute surrounding one of the personal guarantees the other personal guarantee was valid and so a deal had to be struck.

OUTCOME

As a result of the contentious issue, we were able to argue that one guarantor was not liable and in any event his personal financial circumstances provided little opportunity for recovery to the bank.

With respect to the other guarantor, he wanted the matter resolved in order that he could get move on with his life and the only 2 options he had to fund any sort of settlement were to a) sell an overseas property, which at the time of the settlement was virtually impossible given the state of the property market or b) release funds from his pension fund.

We would not normally recommend the use of pension funds to settle such debts, but at a settlement value of £150k this was an opportunity for our client that he did not want to miss.

As stated above we strongly recommend that pension funds are not used for this purpose; however we have a number of similar cases where the use of such funds have been invaluable in enabling a beneficial settlement to be reached.