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INTRODUCTION
This Blog is dedicated to making public some of the business activities and methods of Liam Collins, David Bone Jr and their associates. In the spring of 2010, the present authors invested in Collins & Bone (C&B), who were offering an enticing 8-10% interest on the basis of buying houses for cash, renovating them and letting them out to students. We were assured that our money was secured against houses that they owned, including their own homes and the properties held by their associated company, Castle & Gatehouse (C&G). We have emails and brochures that confirm these details, as do others who invested on this same basis at around the same time. The idea worked for us for over a year, then in November 2011 they told us they were insolvent. They refused our every request for clear accounts, which led us to suspect wrongdoing. We began an investigation and then started this Blog. We found our suspicions confirmed: other investors had lost sometimes quite large amounts to C&B and its predecessor CBS, and all requests for repayment were adamantly refused. These people use and have used so many names that we found it necessary to compress them into CoBo (for Collins & Bone) and Coboco (for the whole bunch of them – there are quite a few!) Note that there is an index in the margin at the right hand side.

Saturday 24 December 2011

MISMANAGEMENT - DEFINITELY NOT THE FIRST TIME

We have been sent a link to a webpage which shows that this is not the first time that Liam Collins and David Bone have failed in the student accommodation business and caused multiple problems for their tenants:

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1085256

These posts are from Loughborough University and dated November - December 2009.  The directors of CBS Lettings were Liam Collins and David Bone. CBS Lettings changed its name to Student HMO Lettings in December 2009 and is currently in liquidation  with debts of £1,680,520 (see below our post of 20th December).

It is interesting to contrast the students’ experience with a paragraph from the Collins & Bone Overview Brochure sent to us in March 2010:

‘The new approach comes from partners David Bone and Liam Collins whose own University years motivated them to improve student living conditions by providing high spec accommodation and new standards of care in order to build demand, minimize voids and guarantee profitable returns for investors. What followed has now become a multi-million pound portfolio centred on the North West, North East and Midlands.’ p 18

Posted by IFS at 11:04

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