'Frustration' for Irish investors who put €107m into Dolphin Trust property firm    

Irish investors failed to get interest payments on loan notes and principal payments returned since late 2019    

The corporate headquarters of German Property Group, formerly called Dolphin Trust, in Langenhagen, Germany. File picture: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

A meeting of brokers, who are are members of business group Brokers Ireland, heard this week of the "frustration" and uncertainty facing Irish investors who invested €107m in loan notes which are now tied up in the collapsed German Property Group. 

Some of the brokers at the meeting had helped sell the property products to 1,800 Irish clients through unregulated loan notes which were then invested in developing residential German properties. 

The collapse of the German Property Group, formerly called Dolphin Trust, which went into insolvency administration in Bremen last year, put into question more than €1bn the German firm had collected across the world, including Korea, France, and the UK, as well as in Ireland. 

Irish investors failed to get interest payments on their loan notes and their principal payments returned since late 2019.     

Last month, a 78-year-old woman from Cork, Kathleen Dineen, who has lived with multiple sclerosis for 40 years, won a High Court petition for the winding up of an Irish-based company that helped raise a total of €107m from investors in Ireland on behalf of the German Property Group-Dolphin Trust. 

The order involved an Irish-registered company MUT 103, which was one of the investment vehicles used by the Irish distributor Wealth Options Trustees Ltd (WOTL) whose head office is in Kildare.    

In recent years, WOTL had helped raise a total of €107m from Irish investors through a network of appointed brokers. 

The funds were put into the MUT 103 company and into another vehicle called MUT 116 on behalf of the Germany Property Group, which was also known under its former names of Dolphin Capital and Dolphin Trust. 

WOTL's MUT 116 company is not in liquidation but discussions are believed to be ongoing about its future.   

In a letter to Irish creditors last week, the official liquidator, Myles Kirby, said that it was "impossible to determine" the outcome of the insolvency process in Germany at this stage.   

He said that there were around 730 outstanding loan notes held by over 600 investors involved in the Irish liquidation.                 

Rachel McGovern, director of financial services at Brokers Ireland, said that Monday's meeting of brokers heard there was "frustration" for clients that very little was known about what will happen in the liquidation.