I remember some time ago, possibly when challenger was experiencing difficulties that you expected two boat share schemes to run into difficulties.

Was Ownerships the second one you had in mind Phillip?

OwnerShips was going to go bust the day after I left (!). Allen had this great plan to make money from a concept boat called Whisper, it was doomed before it left the drawing board for the simple reason that Allen could not afford to pay for it, and had to raise money to fund it from.....the owners free managment scheme.

A quick bit of maths showed that the sum in capital he had to raise would reduce the already stretched income to the company by such a massive sum that the company could not continue. I put this to Allen and he ignored me. I did not want to work for (and sign cheques for) a company that I knew was going to go bust so I resigned. Trading whilst knowing you are insolvent is actually against the law.

Allen asked that I did not discuss my reasons for leaving with anyone as he was convinced I was wrong.

He only kept it going so long by getting more and more money off the customers by dreaming up more and more grand ideas to hoodwink them out of cash for working capital, of that I am fairly sure. The buy back scheme would have raised instant cash NOW (hang the consequences), the two other "Marina" schemes I had never heard of until all this came out so I have no idea what they are.

So to answer the question above - yes!

Thank you for your candid response.

Whisper might have worked if it hadn't been so pug ugly.

I'd also like to congratulate you on your decision to resign.

Andy

Now we know! I always wondered exactly why you resigned. (we were quite new to the scheme at the time & it seemd a bit sudden) The 'story of the leaves' was never quite the same after you left Philip!
The other unsuccessful project was the narrow beam dutch barge. We were at Stockton Top when Allen returned (looking a little shaken & preocupied!) with the 'wheel house' in kit-form. (I wondered why he had it down when it was not that warm!)

I guess all this will impact on the family as well as a number of owners. What a shame for all concerned.

When I started my tenure as Ownerships operations manager Allen told me that he had taken a loan from the bank to fund Whisper. This was confirmed during the Owners Meetings at the Great Barr Hotel autumn 2004 where Allen talked about the Whisper project, it had been to the London Boat Show and more recently the Southampton Show.

During the presentation Allen apologised for bringing up non-Ownership business up during the meeting, (This one is between me and the bank) but he was very excited about the project and was convinced that it would be a great success. In reality it was being financed by the Free Management Bank. Yes the owners thought their money would be invested in new narrow boats for the scheme but Allen justified this deception because subsequent sales of Whisper would make such a huge profit the money would be paid back before anyone realised what was going on.

Unfortunately Whisper was not only badly financed it was badly designed. I could go on at length about how bad but sufficient to say that it did not generate a single sale and was sold for about one hundred thousand pounds/euros? in Saint Jean de Losne in 2008.

The cost to Ownerships? Well, by Allen’s estimation the construction came to about four hundred thousand and the subsequent modifications and marketing costs a further one hundred thousand.

Philip you are quite right, OS was doomed from the moment the whisper project was conceived, I became aware of the financial situation when about April or May 2006 boat yards and contractors began to complain about non payment. I had a meeting with Allen where I found out that there were 280 owners on the free management system and that the company was no longer generating enough income to pay for the running costs of Ownerships Ltd. As a result the Sinking Fund i.e. the owner’s money was being used to meet the wages bill etc to the point where that was also running on empty. It would appear that Allen had and continued to play fast and loose with the owners money with little regard to the consequences.

Allen’s response was to issue another round of Free Management invitations. Forty unwitting owners responded, which was enough to keep the company afloat for a few more months (and to finance his wedding). At the end of June with the coffers once again empty the buy-back scheme was launched simply as a method of generating money until the whisper project started to make money.

By this time I was very disillusioned and very vocal to AM about the way the company was being run. In return he decided in the interests of the owners and Ownerships it would be better if his new wife was to run the operations side of the business and someone who knew what was going on was sidelined. Obviously someone with a background in HR was far more suitable than someone with thirty years experience in the marine industry. A short time later I was thankfully made redundant.

I thought the company was going to fold in 2006. It is incredible that Allen Mathews was able to paper over the cracks for another four years and I wonder how many more owners have been sucked into the financial black hole during that time.

Chris Hanley

Remember the Serenity engine fiasco? all the lies told over that and the added expense for the owners? AM lost any respect I had for him then!
I paid into the buyback scheme which in 2007 resulted in most of the owners in it selling their shares back. I could not see at that point how OS could sustain the ownership of those shares, he had four in our boat alone!
I bailed out for that reason in 2008.