EXCLUSIVE: Investor Who Tried To Buy LSH For £38M Declared Bankrupt

The Danish investor who tried to buy brokerage Lambert Smith Hampton for £38M in 2019 before pulling out of the deal has been declared bankrupt in the UK, Bisnow can reveal. 

A bankruptcy order was issued by the High Court against John Bengt Moeller on 18 July following a petition by Countrywide, the estate agency chain with which Moeller had been in negotiations to buy LSH.

Following the collapse of the deal in March 2020, Countrywide brought legal proceedings against Moeller, claiming more than £10M in damages, which it said was the difference between the £38M Moeller had agreed to pay and what LSH was likely to be worth if it tried to sell it again. 

It received a judgement in its favour for part of the claim in March 2021. It filed the bankruptcy petition against Moeller in September 2021.

Moeller told Bisnow the bankruptcy would not significantly affect his life and that he still wanted to try to buy LSH. 

“[The bankruptcy order] is not something that takes up my day-to-day business,” he said. “I’m a Danish citizen living in Monaco, I haven’t lived in the UK since 1984, and I have no assets there. The UK has no jurisdiction in Monaco and from a legal point of view, it can’t be transferred.”

Many large UK property agencies have changed hands in the past 20 years, including LSH, but few transactions have had as many twists and turns as this sale, which ultimately fell apart in 2020. 

LSH is a a stalwart of the UK commercial property agency world that can trace its history back to 1773. It employs around 1,300 people, led by CEO Ezra Nahome.

LSH was put up for sale by then publicly listed Countrywide in 2019. Countrywide's share price was floundering due to high levels of debt and it wanted to use proceeds from the sale of LSH to repay a £34M loan. 

In November 2019, Countrywide announced it had agreed a deal to sell LSH to Moeller for £38M. Moeller was a virtual unknown in UK property circles, with his LinkedIn page stating he was founder of a property company called Great Global Holdings. Little other information was available and little was provided by Countrywide. 

Countrywide’s claim said that after receiving approval from its shareholders on 27 December, the deal to sell LSH to Moeller was supposed to complete by 11am on New Year’s Eve. 

But at 1.25am on 31 December, an email dropped into the company’s inbox that put a big dent in those plans. Moeller was facing practical difficulties in arranging the transfer of the £38M. The transfer was imminent, but he needed more time, he said.

Just 10 hours before the 11am deadline, the deal was delayed.

A new deadline of 6 January was set, which was also missed. A final deadline of noon on 16 March was scheduled and when payment was not made, the sales and purchase agreement entered into by Countrywide and Moeller was terminated.

In its legal claim, filed at the High Court on 23 September 2020, Countrywide said it was claiming more than £10M in damages, but did not provide an exact figure. It said its claim would be the difference between the £38M Moeller agreed to pay and the value of LSH at the time of any judgment in its favour, or the amount it received if it was sold before then.

In June 2020, Countrywide said proceeds from the disposal would be £14M less than it had anticipated at the end of 2019. 

In March 2021 Countrywide was taken private by rival estate agency chain Connells. It said it wanted to retain LSH, but the legal case was continued.

In his defence, Moeller said he discovered two legal cases against LSH that had not been disclosed during the due diligence process. Asserting that could have had a material impact on its finances, Moeller launched a counterclaim against Countrywide. 

Countrywide was awarded a summary judgement in March 2021 on part of its claim against Moeller by high court judge Justice Foxton, meaning it won part of its cases without having to proceed to a trial.

Again there was an attempt by Moeller to delay proceedings  — in his judgement, Foxton recounted that at 7.54pm the night before the hearing on whether Countrywide would be awarded its judgement, a solicitor for Moeller emailed the court asking for an adjournment because ill health meant he had not been able to attend to the case. 

The judge said he declined to give an adjournment because Moeller had been given plenty of time. 

In his judgement, Foxton said one of the legal disputes referred to by Moeller in his defence had been disclosed to him, and the other was too small to be material. The amount of damages to be awarded to Countrywide was still to be decided, the judgement said, as was whether the firm was owed the £300K of interest it claimed because the deal had not completed. 

The judge did determine Moeller was liable to pay Countrywide £125K in legal costs. The bankruptcy petition against Moeller was launched in September that year.

Moeller said he thought the bankruptcy petition related to unpaid fees being sought by his advisers on the deal totalling around £300K, including fees owed to accountancy firm RSM. Countrywide is listed as the petitioner on court documents. 

And despite the previous deal having collapsed, Moeller said he still wanted to buy LSH.

“I’m going to give you some good news,” he said. “I still want to buy LSH. That’s going to be a challenge. The new owners of Countrywide don’t know what to do with it.”

Asked whether funds were in place to buy LSH he said: “You would never be able to start an acquisition process with a FTSE 100 company without showing proof of funds. That doesn’t happen and it wouldn’t work that way.”

Moeller added the reputational risk for the seller and the risk of wasting millions of pounds in fees was too high.

Moeller told Bisnow he made his money in real estate over the past three decades, beginning by working for Scandinavian contractor Kay Wilhelmsen, acting as a developer in London in the mid-1980s on schemes on the eastern fringe of the City.