Sales pitch included worrying claims that you could buy paintings to provide for your pension
Website compareinvestments.co.uk makes the bold claim to be “the leading comparison platform for all your investment needs”.
As do comparebestinvestments.co.uk and tangiblecommodities.com.
They also all offer incredible returns of up to 10.85%, boasting how their team of analysts “scour the market on a daily basis” to provide good recommendations.
“Our team does the due diligence and research so that you don’t need to take any unnecessary risk,” the sites claim.
All of which gives the impression that these are objective investment comparison websites.
They are not. Comparebestinvestments and tangiablecommodities state at the bottom of the home pages that they are run by a London company called Grove Square Galleries, while compareinvestments says it is run by GSG 1 Limited, which has the same address and director as Grove Square Galleries.
I responded to comparebestinvestments and was advised to put my money into just one investment – funnily enough, it was art sold by Grove Square Galleries.
Its “senior portfolio manager” Ryan Marsh phoned to say: “It’s my job on a daily basis to source for investors investment-grade artworks that we see showing double digit returns and outperforming most other markets, including stock markets, ISAs, bonds, property market etc.”
He told me that investing in art was similar to investing in property: “It’s something you can feel, you can see, something that’s not going anywhere, so the security element alone is what investors are interested in.”
The initial temptation of a 10.85% return was now inflated: “We are showing our clients on average 12-15% a year.”
And he added that the art director at Grove Square, Serena Dunn, had previously run the art gallery at Harrods – though I could find no mention of Harrods on her LinkedIn profile.
Mr Marsh followed up the call with an email insisting: “Art investments are low risk” and calling them “ideal for pension provision or long-term financial security”.
“Due to the continued uncertainty within the traditional financial markets, more and more investors are turning to the art world as a safe, stable and secure way to invest, protect their wealth and experience capital growth,” he wrote.
An attached brochure maintained that paintings are a liquid asset that can be sold at short notice “without the financial penalties associated with traditional bank-related investments”.
All of which, I suggested to the director of Grove Square Galleries, 38-year-old George Harrison, is a load of Jackson Pollocks.
Art investments are high risk, not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
Far from being liquid, they might prove impossible to sell. One work featured in its brochure showed some bedsheets and sticks smeared with paint – who’s to say there’ll be a market for a painting like this when you try to sell it a few years hence?
Maybe the artist will turn out to be the next Tracey Emin but I would not rely on that happening to provide for my pension. For every Emin or Banksy, there are going to be thousands of wannabe artists who never make it big, just as there are loads of galleries pushing their collections of potential investors – just put “art investment” into Google and look at the adverts at the top of the search results.
And it is rubbish to say there are no financial penalties: if you sell at auction you could be stung for commission of around 15%, insurance and transport costs, and VATat 20%.
I also asked Mr Harrison to explain what makes him an art expert, because his LinkedIn profile only goes back to January 2020 and he does not feature on the company’s “Meet the team” page, despite being the sole director.
I’ve had no answers to my questions.
investigate@mirror.co.uk