Investment firm that bailed out Plymouth Argyle to be dissolved

THE investment company which once bailed out Plymouth Argyle with a £2.1million mortgage is to be dissolved.

Mastpoint Ltd was set up in 2009 to hold the Argyle shares of former executive director Keith Todd and ex-chairman Sir Roy Gardner and other tycoons, the super-rich and friends of prime ministers.

The firm, used as a "mechanism" to raise cash when the club hit the financial rocks in 2008/9, was established to attract this list of "long-term investors".

It loaned the football club £2.1million as a second mortgage over Home Park.

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And last year a national newspaper said that with other loans taken into account, investors in Mastpoint may have lost as much as £3million trying to prop up Argyle as the club slid into administration.

Argyle officially exited administration last November when new owner James Brent's Green Pilgrim Limited took over the club.

And now Mastpoint Ltd, and its sister company Mastpoint Finance, has been listed at Companies House as subject of a "proposal to strike off".

This is when a company applies to be removed from the Companies House register, and dissolved.

The list of Mastpoint investors included a stellar list of 11 "high net worth individuals". They included one of Britain's wealthiest men, two of ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's "gang of four" close friends, the bosses of major international companies and top bankers. Collectively they were worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

The list included PR guru Roland Rudd, an ex-journalist who sold his public relations firm for £50million and was one of Tony Blair's associates alongside another Mastpoint investor, Russell Chambers, dubbed "Blair's favourite banker".

Insurance tycoon Peter Wood, who founded Direct Line and Sheilas' Wheels, had a £120million fortune, while engineer Dr Eddie O'Connor sold his firm for £1.8billion.

Larry Hirst was a former head of IBM, Donald McGarva headed DHL's logistics operation across Japan, Korea and Philippines, and Rob Lucas was managing partner of the private equity firm which owned the London Eye, Legoland and Alton Towers.

Other investors included Richard Metcalf, chief risk officer at Swiss UBS Investment Bank; Bernard Taylor, co-vice-chairman of US bank Evercore Partners Inc; US businessman Joe Plumeri, reported to earn US$10million a year; and David Rowe, chief executive of broadband firm Easynet.