Following the news of the closure of the EcoHouse Singapore office, news has emerged that creditors of the UK office will be meeting to do a voluntary wind-up of the company. The meeting of EcoHouse creditors is set to take place next week.
Creditors requiring further information may apply to John D Travers & Company, First Floor, 58 Hagley Road, Stourbridge, West Midlands DY8 1QD, Telephone: +44 (0) 1384 374000.
It was also reported in Business Times that some Singaporean investors are planning to do a class-action suit against EcoHouse.
Personally, I think it’s going to be a waste of time and money.
Lawsuits will only work if a company is solvent and wants to continue running its business. If a company is insolvent, you might end up getting very little or nothing even if you were to win a lawsuit against it.
Just look at what happened to Profitable Plots investors who also tried to initiate a class-action suit.
But when investors are looking at a total wipe-out of their capital, I guess they will try anything. Eventually, reality sets in and they will have to stomach the losses and move on.
This is one of the pitfalls of investing in an overseas development. If something goes wrong, recourse options are limited.
Some people might say that the investors should have no complaints as they went in with their eyes open.
This might be true to a certain extent but I feel that many people are not equipped with the necessary skills to evaluate such investments properly. And some of these skills can only come with experience.
Even when I was a naive investor many years ago, I had my fair share of being fooled and paid the price for learning the lessons.
It’s good thing that MAS will finally be regulating some of these products. Implementation will take a while though.