MR NICHOLAS ANDREW GOULD

Disqualified from

2022-11-18

Date of birth on record

November 1969

In November 2016, when applying for a loan of £300,000 to Chard Housing Projects Limited (“Chard”), Nicholas Andrew Gould (“Mr Gould”) failed to perform a careful review of the information supplied to him by a professional adviser and agent introduced by the lending platform, which then allowed the lenders to be provided with a misleading valuation report. The lenders subsequently lost the whole value of their investment: ?In November 2016, investors were invited to lend £300,000 to Chard by way of an investment platform to enable it to develop a property which was referred to in an information pack as ‘Phoenix House’; ?By way of background only, and not as a matter demonstrating his unfitness to act as a company director (i) the information pack, provided to him in draft by the professional agent in advance of its circulation to investors, specified that Chardhad purchased “the premises” for £600,000 + VAT, when he had personally purchased a property of which Phoenix House formed part for £280,000 and (ii) a valuation was appended to the information pack which appeared to be an authentic report prepared by a RICS-certified valuer, prepared upon the instructions of his professional agent. It appears that this valuation report was not an authentic report and had not been prepared by a RICs-certified valuer although I was unaware of this until informed of the same by the Insolvency Service. ?The information pack led investors to believe that the development property had been professionally valued by a RICS-certified valuer (on the instructions of the lending platform and/or the professional agent) in October 2016 at £650,000, representing a loan to value security of 46%; ?Had he checked the information pack with sufficient care before it was provided to investors, He ought to have identified the fact that the reported valuation for the development property was unrealistically high and could not properly be relied upon. ?A lender syndicate was formed to lend on the terms offered and the £280,800 net loan advance was received on 18 November 2016. ?In November 2016, the title for 17 Fore Street, Chard was divided into two parts being The Copper Kettle and Phoenix House. The title comprising Phoenix House was transferred into Chard’s name and given as security for this loan, while he also provided a personal guarantee limited to £300,000; ?No payments were due under the terms of the loan agreement until May 2018 when Chard made the first payment of £4,069 for interest and commission on time. 11 further payments fell due but went unpaid through no fault of his own, and the balance on the account at the date of the administration (15 May 2018) was £366,143 of which £321,385 was not due until 20 May 2018; ? Both titles making up the property at 17 Fore Street, Chard were sold at auction in October 2019 on a distressed basis for £108,000. £29,160 of this came to the administrators for Chard, all of which was used up in fees and expenses. There was no realisation for Chard’s creditors.