2nd group of investors to sue
A SECOND group of Lehman Minibond investors has announced plans to take the distributors and trustee of the failed product to court.
The investors – they call themselves the Minibond Investors Action Group or MIAG – appears to be larger than a 250-strong group that threatened legal action last week.
It also appears to have a more concrete legal strategy.
The organisers hope to get about 1,000 investors to commit between $2,000 to $3,000 each for a $2.5 million warchest that will fund court action, possibly in May, against the various Minibond distributors and and the products’ trustee, HSBC Trustee.
The group posted a new blog online on Wednesday stating that lawyer Conrad Campos of Conrad Campos & Company ‘will be the lead lawyer in the proposed class action’.
An MIAG committee member told the Straits Times that the group has a database of more than 1,200 people who invested in various series of the Lehman Brothers-linked notes.
He also said most of the investors in the group did not fall into the ‘vulnerable class’, which has had some success in gaining compensation. Most of them had bought Minibonds from brokerages as opposed to banks.
The group’s 11-strong committee took over three months to find a suitable lawyer.
‘We went round and talked to about half a dozen of lawyers and Mr Campos was the only one that could understand the product well,’ said the committee member, who wanted to stay anonymous.
MIAG believes ‘a class action’ against the distributors and trustee is the most effective way to ‘seek redress and recoup our loss’.
