Hey guys, it's asher trading212 are in trouble, and today things are only getting worse for them. This time they have outdone it themselves, and things are really not looking. Good today is the first of november, and that means that today, trading 212 is not one, but two months behind with filing their company accounts to companies. House accounts for the financial year ending on the 31st of december 2020 were due to be submitted by trading 212.

On the 30th of september 2021, and as i am recording, this video trading to one two's accounts are still overdue in this video. I will explain what this means, what the potential implications are for trading to one two and for their customers and share some other really interesting developments with trade into one two over the last few days and weeks. Let's start with discussing what being late with your accounts means every year every company in the uk has to submit their annual accounts to companies, house and hmrc. This is a legal requirement and the accounts will let the authorities know how your business is doing, how much tax you owe you have to submit all of your financial data and a whole load of specifically mandated statements.

The bigger your company, the more stuff you have to submit you, have nine months to submit the accounts. Trading two on two's financial year aligns with the calendar year, so their last financial year is 2020, the whole of 2020 and nine months after the end of 2020. Is the end of september? New companies do miss their annual accounts. Sometimes bigger companies miss annual account deadlines.

This happens. This is particularly common with small companies, one-man bands contractors. You know like people who are not a large established company. It happens all the time you might have forgotten that you have to do it.

Maybe your accountants are not very good at what they do. Maybe they were particularly busy at this point in time or maybe you're not very organized, and you know bad with managing your finances. It happened to me too. I've been late with filing my accounts.

This is common, it happens to everyone, but i am not a regulated company to hold customer assets and customer money. I also don't have one million customers whose money i happen to hold, and sometimes big companies do have a mishap. You know. Sometimes things get lost in the post, there's a delay, maybe your accountants are snowed under.

It's very, very common for stuff to happen, and paperwork could maybe sometimes be submitted a few days later. But here we are we're over a month late, and this is where things actually get serious, because here is the letter that trading 212 would have received for missing the deadline. The first time around this is not their letter, but it is a standard, statutory letter that everyone gets now. There are two things that happen when you miss the finding deadline.

The first thing that you get is no big deal. You get a fine, you have to pay a fine and that fine for being late by one month is 150 pounds and being late by two months is only 375 pounds. So that's not much of a deal and i have a feeling that trading 202 might just be able to afford that. But it's this notice in the second paragraph that you really do need to pay attention to failing to file company accounts is a criminal offence in the uk, especially if you fail to file intentionally.

It does not always get prosecuted, especially with these cases that explain of you know small companies being laid because they're not very organized, but technically it is a criminal offence in uk. Like imagine that you didn't want to show something in those accounts, because it would let's say, hurt your business in in a theoretical setup or if you couldn't agree the wording of some of the statements in your accounts with your auditors, because they would maybe not leave The best sort of sounding accounts that maybe would you know, cause some concern among your customers and, if you're a customer of trading 212, and you want to understand if the company is in good standing. You have no idea, because the last submitted accounts that you do have access to only go up to december 2019, and that is almost two years ago now recently, the uk government has taken a softer approach to companies that file their accounts. Late prosecutions are not as common they're, not as frequent, and they have recently last year.

They gave companies three months extra on top of that nine months in order for them to file their accounts. Because of covet, because you know people were finding it difficult, but that extension expired earlier this year it no longer applies, you can't just go and submit accounts late anymore. You can, however, now specifically request a three-month extension, but if you do that in cases where that does happen, and if it is then granted, you have to request it in advance. The due date on companies house is normally then updated, and that's how you know that the date has been extended and the company has more time to submit.

So it appears based on the information that is publicly available. That training212 did not extend, nor did they choose to submit their accounts on time, they're just late with filing the legally required paperwork to uk authorities. If they continue not submitting their accounts, the company will eventually be prosecuted and can be struck off. The company register and a whole load of other stuff will happen, but that is a lengthy process.

It will not start anytime soon, and i completely do not think that this is in any way likely to happen here. At least i hope so now here's the thing on its own, you might say, oh well, it happens. You know this is quite frequent, blah blah unprecedented times. Sometimes, companies are late with finding the paperwork - maybe it's because of covet, but last year, during the major lockdowns that were happening, trading 202 submitted their accounts on the 12th of june over three and a half months.

Early during a situation that was much worse and much more critical at that time in terms of people's ability to work, people's ability to go to their office and the year before that they submitted them on the 16th of july two and a half months early, and So on so trading to one two have never submitted their accounts even remotely close to the deadline. There isn't a pattern of doing it, which makes it even less likely that there is some minor technical reason why they were delayed. So normally they were submitted at the end of september and they were delayed by a little bit and that's why we're seeing this. But then you go and remember that other things have happened too, just after the last financial year ended in january trading, 212 stopped taking on new accounts.

Interesting right. Remember that they officially said that there was absolutely no course concern nothing at all was going on. They were just making some minor technical upgrades and they needed to hire a few more support staff. That was the reason you see why they stopped taking on new accounts.

It definitely completely no way was anything to do with regulatory requirements. The fca telling them they weren't allowed to take on a new account or any other reasons like it. They categorically denied that it could possibly be anything else, but we are now in november 10 months after january and they apparently still haven't completed these minor technical improvements, and you know hiring a few extra support staff and just a few days ago, trading 212 made. Yet another statement that says absolutely nothing within their community about what's going on? No explanation, no eta! No anything! I have never heard of a super fast growing company, just stopping taking on new accounts because they had some.

You know technical tweaks to do for 10 months and if you were working on some straightforward technical updates that were transparent, they were going to make your systems better under enable new functionality enable new customers to to do stuff better. Then what would stop you talking about? The progress of those things or letting customers know what it is that you are actually working for some kind of rough eta, some kind of expectations, some kind of you know updates. The answer is nothing so now we are 10 months down the line. It seems pretty clear that something else has been going on behind the scenes.

The company has not said anything for 10 months about why they're not taking on new accounts using the exact same excuse that they used right at the beginning, which doesn't really hold any longer. They started letting customers from europe open accounts a few months ago, but to do that they registered a new trading 212 entity in cyprus and because cyprus is in the eu, that does allow them access to eu customers. But cyprus is known for having exceptionally loose regulations and very loose oversight of financial companies, which is precisely why so many companies are based there as well as tax benefits. So clearly, the process with resolving whatever issues they might have with the fca are going a little slower than they managed to resolve those issues with the cypriot authorities in the last few weeks.

Some other important things have happened. First trading 202 raised 20 million pounds in funding. The sources of that funding are unclear. Trading 2 is owned by a holding company called trading 212 group limited they.

The company are ultimately owned. In bulgaria, the trading 20 group limited company owns 75 percent of the shares or more of the uk entity, and trading 202 group limited itself is owned by the two founders ivan ashmanov and the borislav ned yalkov. So it appears that the founders have privately raised funds from sources that we do not know because it is not published and they haven't disclosed any other beneficial owners who have direct or indirect control of the business to companies. House uh.

We don't know where those funds came from, but they've turned up and they've been deposited in trading 212 in exchange of equity, and it is good for users of the platform. They now have an extra 20 million pounds worth of capital to invest in the business to spend on growing it and delivering whatever it is that they're looking to deliver and it looks like they have been busy at the end of august trading, 212 appointed gary dixon. As a non-executive director, looking after audit risk and compliance, you know like ensuring company accounts submit submitted and all the other mandated paperwork is delivered on time. That sort of stuff, then, just a few days ago, they appointed george mantellis to be the chief operating officer and muketh chaudhary.

As the ceo of the business. Remember they fired the last ceo in spring, but according to press announcements and their linkedin profiles, both actually joined in may, not in october, but those positions were only confirmed the company's house in october. So i am guessing that they were in some kind of interim non-official roles, not actually the roles that they are stating on their linkedin profiles, because there is absolutely no way whatsoever that trading212 would forget to submit crucial, legally mandated incredibly important paperwork to the authorities. On time about directors, starting work in the business right, that could not possibly happen.

Both of them worked at the same time in the london capital group, so i am guessing that one of them may be joined and brought along the other, but they obviously know each other from from the past, so some people might say well perhaps they were waiting For the new ceo and ceo to join the company before you know formally submitting those accounts, you would want the new boss to know what it is is being submitted. Well, they apparently have been with the company since may so that should have been plenty of time for them to get acquainted with whatever it is that the company had to submit and according to uk company legislation, issues with directors taking on responsibility for preparing accounts is Not a valid excuse for being late. I did find it pretty funny, though, when i saw that the new ceo actually liked someone's post on linkedin a week ago, which recommended accountants, that, among other things, do you know regulatory returns and deal with limited companies and corporation tax. That was pretty funny by the way i actually still have my icer, my personal iso, with trading 212.

So i am a customer. I am continuing to use the platform because i started using it some time ago and because i feel the fees are good and i didn't want to go and be out of the market for a long time to move it elsewhere. I have moved all of my non iso money earlier this year out of trading two one two and do remember, because i will get completely slated. If i forget to mention it.

Fscs protection still applies. There is a protection for up to 85 000 pounds worth of balances and cash if you hold assets or money with a trade into one two that the uk government does provide to companies like trade2 that are regulated. So there is that so there's no need to panic. There's no need to immediately move your money out.

That is absolutely not what i am advocating and for the record. I actually really really hope the trading to want to sort themselves out the way that they have engaged with customers and the way the business has operated. Reason uh recently has been a complete shambles. I want trading 212 to be a good platform.

I want customers in the uk and other countries to have a great choice of platforms that don't lie. Don't do bait and switch tactics and don't renege on legal obligations that actually talk to their customers and explain things and have some kind of degree of transparency and honesty about them. To say what is actually happening, and here is hoping that the new management that only started a few days ago can actually turn the ship around and sort things out. Because boy, do things really need sorting out here, we'll have to wait and see if you found this video useful, please don't forget to smash the like button for the youtube algorithm.

Thank you so much for watching and as always i'll see you guys later, you.