Bell Yard was appointed by law firm, Edwin Coe, to raise awareness of a potential investor group action over the now disgraced Eclipse Partnerships film finance fund series.
Edwin Coe led a group action for approximately 100 investors in the Eclipse Film Partnerships which were marketed as creative tax relief schemes.
Investors included professionals, footballers, sports managers and celebrities including, according to media reports, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Sir Alex Ferguson.
In 2012, the HMRC Tax Tribunals ruled that these partnerships were aggressive tax avoidance schemes, a decision that was corroborated in April 2016 by the Supreme Court, which agreed with the Court of Appeal’s February 2015 decision that Eclipse 35 was not a bona fide trading business and therefore was not entitled to tax relief. This left investors facing huge tax bills and legal fees as HMRC issued tax demands.
Our client’s objective was build out the number of investors in their litigation group before launching a letter to target respondent parties (primarily the lending banks).
Bell Yard assisted this objective by drafting a press release which announced our client’s intentions to launch a group action within a certain timeframe, which acted as the clarion call for more investors, trumpeting the benefits of Therium funding (meaning there were reduced litigation risks and costs to individuals who sign up).
As a result, our client’s group action was widely publicised, with stories published in the Mail on Sunday, CityAM, The Telegraph and in the financial trade press.
