I got a Google Ad on my phone's suggested articles timeline for an "investment bond" offering the following (direct quotes):
I will not be touching this with a barge pole as I know no such investment product is possible.
However, I am concerned about less sophisticated investors being sucked in. The ad and product website does its best to make the company and product seem respectable - the instrument is seemingly quoted on and invested in via a European exchange, and three Irish entities are listed as issuer, trustee and overseas counsel. The other three entities are based in jurisdictions that some might consider lax on financial transparency and which could be used to shield funds from tracing and retrieval.
There are glowing reviews on Google but a mixture on TrustPilot. Many of the glowing reviews are of a similar form or are not from investors who have held bonds to "maturity".
I expect the bond will perform mostly as advertised until near maturity, when a rollover of capital and a fresh investment will be encouraged.
I reported the ad to Google but they've rejected my complaint unless I can provide more specific details of how it violates Google's policies. I may do that when I have time.
My question is - is there anything that can be done under Irish regulations to prevent this being advertised in Ireland or targeted at Irish investors?
There is a negative discussion about a prior issue of similarly named bonds on Reddit, with some suggestions that it may be a Ponzi scheme (you might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.).
I'm not going to name or link to the product for now, as I don't want to advertise it further, but you can probably identify it from the above details.
- 18% annual yield
- 4.5% fixed quarterly coupon rate
- 36 months bond maturity period
- 100% bond buyback value
I will not be touching this with a barge pole as I know no such investment product is possible.
However, I am concerned about less sophisticated investors being sucked in. The ad and product website does its best to make the company and product seem respectable - the instrument is seemingly quoted on and invested in via a European exchange, and three Irish entities are listed as issuer, trustee and overseas counsel. The other three entities are based in jurisdictions that some might consider lax on financial transparency and which could be used to shield funds from tracing and retrieval.
There are glowing reviews on Google but a mixture on TrustPilot. Many of the glowing reviews are of a similar form or are not from investors who have held bonds to "maturity".
I expect the bond will perform mostly as advertised until near maturity, when a rollover of capital and a fresh investment will be encouraged.
I reported the ad to Google but they've rejected my complaint unless I can provide more specific details of how it violates Google's policies. I may do that when I have time.
My question is - is there anything that can be done under Irish regulations to prevent this being advertised in Ireland or targeted at Irish investors?
There is a negative discussion about a prior issue of similarly named bonds on Reddit, with some suggestions that it may be a Ponzi scheme (you might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.).
I'm not going to name or link to the product for now, as I don't want to advertise it further, but you can probably identify it from the above details.
Last edited: