Stronghold Global Finance, a UK-based trade finance firm, went into administration in August last year following a High Court order over £181,000 in unpaid debts and facing a lawsuit from a client that had allegedly paid the firm advance fees for a facility that never materialised.
The company had a total of seven creditors supporting the winding-up petition at the time of the administration, a lawyer for one creditor told the High Court, including the landlord of its former office in London and three ex-employees.
Liquidators were appointed on August 30, a notice in the London Gazette shows.
Stronghold was founded in 2021 by Tohib Doyin-Iyiola, who also served as chief executive. Describing itself as a boutique investment bank, the company said it would target commodity trades or lines of credit in the US$5mn-plus bracket.
In 2023, before it went into administration, Stronghold was sued by a former client, Initia Ventures.
Initia is seeking the return of £163,730 in fees paid to the financier in early 2022, claiming that Stronghold failed to execute a £17.6mn working capital facility intended for a waste recycling business Initia planned to buy near Sheffield.
Doyin-Iyiola and a Stronghold entity in Luxembourg are also named as defendants in the case.
Dispute over failed transaction
In its suit, Initia alleges that Stronghold representatives described the firm as a “direct lender” and that Doyin-Iyiola said Stronghold would “extend funding that was provided to it” by the family office of Saudi businessman Tarek Mohammed bin Laden.
But the claim says that in November 2022, Stronghold informed Initia that “market conditions have proved difficult”, leading to “unforeseen protraction in procuring confirmed funding” for the facility.
Stronghold offered to refund only the closing fees paid by Initia if the firm relinquished all its claims against the financier, but Initia refused, according to the claim.
Initia also alleges it incurred hefty legal fees of its own and other expenses related to the acquisition of the waste recycling company, a deal that collapsed when Stronghold withdrew its financing offer.
In a defence filed in the case in July 2023, Stronghold admitted receiving the fees but denied making any false representations. It claimed the transaction never closed because of delays caused by Initia, as well as Gowling, a law firm advising Stronghold on the transaction.
Stronghold argued in the filing that Initia changed the shareholding structure for the transaction several times, necessitating further know-your-customer checks, and there were “several key conditions precedent which needed to be concluded prior to the facility agreement being executed”.
“The amounts [fees] were paid in pursuit of a transaction for which there was no guarantee would have completed,” Stronghold said in the filing, claiming it never committed to funding the deal.
The company’s defence said it was only acting as a “mandated lead arranger” on the transaction and that Doyin-Iyiola “no longer works for” Stronghold Global Finance.
Initia’s claim alleges that Matthew Goddard, an executive director of Stronghold until May 2022, told Initia “that the defendants were in fact not at any material time [in] possession of sufficient funds to provide the required financing to [Initia]”.
The claim says Goddard also informed Initia that Stronghold has “similarly taken fees from other third parties in respect of other proposed transactions and subsequently failed to provide the funding promised to those third parties”.
Goddard said, according to Initia’s court claim, that he “suspects that [Doyin-Iyiola] has personally misappropriated funds that properly belong to [Stronghold] and/or third parties” but that he was “unable to verify this” because he did not have control of the company’s bank accounts and finances.
Initia’s court claim further alleges Gowling was owed £163,000 by Stronghold as of May 2023. Initia paid a £36,000 legal deposit to Stronghold for Gowling’s fees, but Alasdair McKenzie, then a partner with the firm, told Initia it never received the money from Stronghold, according to the court filing. McKenzie and Gowling declined to comment.
Doyin-Iyiola’s defence, filed with the court, said Initia was “put to strict proof” of the statements allegedly made by Goddard and that he “has no knowledge of what was said to the claimant” by Goddard and McKenzie.
The case is ongoing and no trial date has been set, meaning Initia’s allegations and Stronghold’s counter-arguments have not yet been tested by a court or ruled on by a judge. The case has since been transferred out of the High Court and into a county court. Intia declined to comment for this story.
Doyin-Iyiola did not respond to questions from GTR about Stronghold’s liquidation or the lawsuit.
In March 2024, before the firm’s administration, he told GTR that “the company at all times declines to comment on specific allegations and denies any wrongdoing or unlawful conduct”.
Winding up proceedings
A winding-up petition was first filed against Stronghold in 2023 by a former employee who claimed they were owed outstanding wages following their resignation. Stronghold lost a legal bid to prevent the winding-up petition from being publicly advertised.
The firm later paid the disputed wages, but the petition was subsequently taken over by the landlord of Stronghold’s former office in London.
At a June 2024 court hearing, Doyin-Iyiola said the company was expecting a £7mn payment from a “large financial institution” and a judge granted the firm until mid-August to settle all its debts.
During an August 14 hearing, a barrister representing Stronghold said the company had not yet paid the landlord or six additional creditors that supported the petition, but blamed the company’s debts on “the previous senior management” and said its affairs were being “normalised” following the appointment of external accountants.
But Judge Sebastian Prentis said the winding-up petition had been active for “an absurdly long time” and ordered the company to be wound up, adding he “had no mind at all to give you [Stronghold] permission to appeal”.
A lawyer representing one of the petitioners told the court that £102,870 of the £181,000 debt was owed to three former employees who won claims against Stronghold in the Employment Tribunal over unpaid wages in 2023 and 2024.
Tribunal records show that in May 2024, a former office manager was awarded £16,633 for unpaid wages and termination without notice.
In July that year, a senior manager was awarded £98,548 for outstanding holiday pay and for Stronghold “failing to pay salary” from August 2023 onwards. A junior employee was also awarded £4,322 for unlawful deductions from their wages and outstanding holiday pay.
Stronghold was renamed SGF Transaction Services Ltd shortly before the administration.
A spokesperson for the liquidators, FRP, declined to comment.
GTR was owed money by Stronghold Global Finance, in the form of unpaid invoices for GTR events in which the company participated in 2022. GTR is not a party to any legal claim against the company and wrote off the debt in August 2024.
