Eddie Hobbs new Brendan Investments vehicle

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Mantus, I see Au Revoir does not mean goodbye. Welcome back, we do need some dissent.

I have already remarked that EH and Riddler share that most bizzarre view that calling 1% AMC 4% is akin to calling stamp duty for a mortgagee 100%. No two people could come up with such a perverse argument independently - and yet there appears to be a good alibi. I suppose Riddler heard/read EH's argument and repeated it, can any sleuth out there check the chronology?
 
I think we should be protecting people's identities, as per the ending in Spartacus. So I'll start the ball rolling:
I'm Eddie Hobbs!

(Is that too old a reference for most people?)
 
ubiquitous said:
Why so? Maybe he feels there are other & better ways to communicate to his target market?
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Maybe so. But he has acknowledged in the Sunday Times piece referred to that he has posted on AAM. Therefore, he is clearly both familiar with the forum and is registered to post on it. In that context and given the heavy criticism here of aspects of his investment product and in particular the marketing of it, I would find it surprising that he would not respond. Given the number of times this thread has been referred to in press coverage of Brendan Investments, he is obviously well aware of it.
 
Well spotted Mantus.

Riddler must be chuffed to have made the paper. Interesting observation on media participation too.

I’d imagine one of the benefits of this thread is it is providing valuable feedback to the promoters of the Brendan scheme.

I notice that one of Riddler’s posts mentioned disintermediation of the intermediary which is of course is testing the objectivity of so many people in reviewing Brendan Investments. It’s reflected in Refer’s comments too.

In combining both a vehicle such as the Brendan plc bypasses manufacturers and intermediaries.

Whatever about the offering itself, one thing it has done is open a new market potential which is probably good for competition and choice.
 
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converse2007 said:
In combining both a vehicle such as the Brendan plc bypasses manufacturers and intermediaries.
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In doing so one of course foregoes the respective services of efficient administration and financial advice. This is only a good thing if it saves enough money to justfy these deficiencies. As I have pointed out on several occasions and no-one has taken me to task, Brendan is at least 4 times more expensive than a typical life assurance investment.
 
The premise lacks logic. Brendan's costs structure compares very favourably to quoted property plc which logically have geared balance sheets, evident from examining shares on European exchanges. This is the ultimate test ie open market PLC offerings.

The comparison to retail unit linked funds is unfair to these funds.

The same error is made over and over again by those technically uniformed about what real disclosure looks like. These mistake the unique Life Insurance Illustrations as full disclosure when it is very far from it compared to the standards of OIECS under UCITS where annual audited accounts act as the dicipline and where TER is the common measure.

The application of TER on an Irish Life Office Unit Linked fund on a quoted AMC of 1.5% would be over 2% for a really big fund and several times higher for a small one. Put simply the charges surfaced by the Disclosure regs do NOT cover all the costs.

Secondly the comparison is financially unsound unless it compares geared funds against geared funds in property. As has been pointed out when the Hibernian European Residential Fund which is geared is examined the comparison is poor compared to Brendan. This is because there are more noses in the trough, (a) commissions of up to 5% and Life Office admin charges.

PS. Au Revoir used in common speak means until we meet again.
PPS. Hobbs had a well known moniker familiar to those posting in the early years of AAM before Lord of the Rings was made into a popular movie.
 
Mantus, we are starting to go round in circles, but in pursuit of the dernier mot let me repeat some points, which you simply ignore:

Life office disclosure is complete. SoA guidance requires ALL costs and charges to be included in the illustrations and the RIY.

The key point about life office disclosure is that it consolidates all charges into a very transparent comparative for the punter at point of sale with a 30 day cooling off.

The Brendan prospectus is the equivalent of the life policy document. To be sure, everything is explicitly spelt out but there is no way of knowing what the combination of the various costs and charges amount to in any easily digestible figure - that's why we have disclosure regulations. Au Contraire with Brendan one is left with an impression that the charges are little more than a misleadingly harmless 1% - that's much worse than even pre disclosure representations on life products.

Brendan has I think listed 7 types of costs and charges in the prospectus. The punter will get her first glimpse of what they all amount to when she gets the first annual accounts. Shock - TER of 6% on shareholder funds, I thought it was 1% plus a few bits and bobs. This enlightenment is coming far too late - there is no way out now, 9 years hard labour beckon.
 
Bertie could never post on Politics.ie or if using a "moniker" make any disclosure that would reveal himself. He would be swamped with grinded axes from every nameless crank and critic who wanted to get stuck into him but would never dare do so using their own names, so I can understand if Hobbs would take a similar view on AAM. Mc Williams takes questions on a website but he controls it to avoid chaos i suppose.

It isn't that important really so long as there is knowledge and information exchanged through constructive debate.
 
I fully agree with you. The value of a site such as this is its anonymity which allows people to enjoy debate freely. Its real value comes from two things in my mind: the excellent contributions from really knowledgeable posters and its provocation of thought and debate. At times this may descend into a chatroom but I think good quality contributions are easily sorted from the noise of chatter.
 
Harchibald, that is simply untrue. By that measure Irish Life Offices are more efficient than much larger OEICS. The Disclosure regs do not capture the charges like forv example the account turnover commissions of stockbroker subsidiaries. The quoted amc of say 0.75% is for the Life Office itself to pay for its fund mgt and admin. More is added for distribution commissions. Unit prices are struck after a whole lorryload of charges have been deducted. In the geared syndicate market, moreover, unadited Unit Trusts by specialist admin houses are used as camoflague between Disclosure regs and the cost of these schemes. There are huge loopholes around the Illustration guidelines.
 
A lot of this discussion seems academic to me. Surely the point is that the assumptions and projections that previously supported this type of venture - cheap credit, capital appreciation, investor confidence, predictible interest rates etc either no longer exist or have been eroded of late. Would any neutral obsever really recommend investing in the Irish property market?

The property investment train has left town, everyone knows it and no amount of wishing will change that.
 
That is precisely the point borne out by the research and the plain obvious; the Irish market is dangerous until the transition is over. Brendan Invt has a 5% allocation to Ireland Development and 60% to Germany Invt Property. The 2007 research on the Brendan site supports the short term tactic of avoiding Ireland altogether until there is better Development Land opportunities. The Shane Ross piece was written from the erroneous perspective that BI was exclusively investing in Ireland but SR is not known for consistent precision to put it kindly.
 
CBRE must already be regretting their involvement with Brendan. Usually writing reports is money for old rope with no subsequent accountability.

Brendan prepares to go to a sea whipped up by a financial crisis of Katriona proportions, anchored down with leaden expenses and using out of date maps.

It won't even reach Rockall before it sinks and along with it the pied piper fuelled dreams of El Dorado of thousands of little people. (Ironically probably will happen in Titanic's centenary year. )

The captain will have escaped a very rich man, though probably forced into exile in Cape Verde.

The recriminations will fly, and hence back to those maps...end of CBRE reputation. No wonder they are already in denial mode.
 

This goes directly to a point I have raised several times already. Why is Brendan raising funds for investment in Ireland when it has no near term plans for any specific projects in Ireland? Granted, it's a small proportion of the overall funds, but there is nothing in the brochure or prospectus to indicate this tranche of investment will be held over until it's perceived that market conditions have improved.

I don't know what 2007 research you're referring to Mantus, but this page on the Brendan website, which is reproduced from the brochure, is much more positive about Ireland:

[broken link removed]

It begins: "The Directors are advised by CBRE that the prospects for the Irish investment property market for the foreseeable future are promising, with total returns expected to continue to remain in high double digits over the next 5 year period on the back of rental and capital appreciation prospects."

Yet another instance, it would appear, where prospective investors cannot get the full picture from the prospectus and brochure.

PS, Found the updated report, and again CBRE express themselves as having a positive view of the Irish market. There is nothing at all in it which would lead investors to believe Brendan intends to defer the Irish tranche of its investments.
 
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The boys from Brendan must be cockahoop with the Shane Ross endorsement of their scheme. Sure everyone knows how to read into Ross’s ramblings : you simply take the opposite position to the Rossian theology. Rossian theology seems to be catching on here too !


Definition of Rossian theology: Something new comes along. You get really cheesed off because you didn’t think of it or it’s heresy to your way on thinking. So you have a right go at it, trying to find all its faults. Donning the mantle of the Grand Inquisitor you sally forth. Only to find that crying heresy creates the opposite reaction as people are only too aware of your true motives. After a while people say, well if he’s against it there must be something good in it.
 
Mantus said:
The Shane Ross piece was written from the erroneous perspective that BI was exclusively investing in Ireland but SR is not known for consistent precision to put it kindly.
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This is factually incorrect. Whatever you think of Ross's analysis, he does state:

"Eddie and the lads have decided to sink the €50m they hope to raise into property in Ireland, the UK, Germany and Portugal."

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/shane-ross/thumbs-down-to-mr-hobbs-1085842.html
 
ubiquitous said:
And to misquote Groucho Marx, a verbally quoted statistic is hardly worth the paper it is written on.
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Ubiquitous, you are indeed seriously misquoting poor old Groucho, seeing as it was Sam Goldwyn who made the now oft-quoted verbal malapropism.



Mind you, good old was no slouch when it came to one-liners.

A little bit like Bertie not wanting to "upset the appletart" or saying "It took Ireland 30 years to become an overnight success".

A little light relief...........hopefully
 

Can you provide a link to any 'point of sale' disclosure that includes the cost/effect of gearing on any of the products to which you refer?
 
Freddie

I am trying to rememeber the answer to the comment below from another poster. When I saw your post I remember that in the early days you used to debate alot here and if memory serves me right with the person mentioned below. Can you remember the moniker?

"PPS. Hobbs had a well known moniker familiar to those posting in the early years of AAM before Lord of the Rings was made into a popular movie."

Thanks

Bedlam
 
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