WYELANDS Bank announced that no fund will be provided by its biggest shareholder Sanjeev Gupta.
The trouble started in March when the Bank of England ordered Wyelands to repay £194 million to its retail depositors.
Wyelands said yesterday it had handed back almost all of the sum, apart from £600,000 subject to probate or old accounts still being traced.
In March last year, Gupta lent Wyelands £75 million, of which £42.9 million has been converted into equity. That came as Wyelands’ board decided to carry out a “solvent wind-down of the balance sheet”, keeping regulators informed about the process.
Gupta has now indicated that he will not be providing further funds to finance a new strategy for the bank. Following several enquiries from independent third parties, the board has authorised chief executive officer Stephen Rose to engage with potential new investors to assess the potential to take Wyelands forward under new ownership, Wyelands said in a statement yesterday.
The Prudential Regulatory Authority order for deposits to be repaid came amid the unfolding crisis at Greensill Capital, which was a large provider of loans to Gupta’s GFG Alliance, a sprawling group that owns operations around the world.
Wyelands, established in 2016 by Gupta and named after his Welsh country estate, filed its accounts yesterday, which showed that for the year to the end of April 2020 it made a loss before tax of £63 million, after booking £61.3 million of loan impairments.
David Lammy
