Dear Ripple Coop 4 Member,
Here is the latest update for Ripple Coop 4 Limited.
Board of Directors
We are sorry to announce that Ursula Stevenson has resigned from the board on 7th May 2025 in order to prioritise her other commitments. We are very grateful for Ursula’s efforts in the past and her assistance this year in transitioning the board into a quorate and functional team; without her efforts we would not be in the position we are now.
The Board needs to have a minimum of three Directors in order to operate. In the interests of resiliency, more directors are needed. The board is now looking for more members to co-opt onto the board. This approach is being taken instead of holding elections due to the logistical challenges and potential costs of holding elections. Directors co-opted in this manner will serve only until the Co-op’s general meeting which is planned for later this year.
- The Directors of the Coop are volunteers and do not receive any payment for their services. The time commitment is approximately 4 to 6 hours per week. Board meetings usually take place on weekday evenings, starting at 8pm. If you are interested in serving as a board member, please complete our form here: https://coop4.uk/become-a-director
- We would particularly welcome applications from members with legal (particularly relating to insolvency) and / or accountancy experience.
Receipt of Begbies Traynor’s Proposal
The board received a copy of the Administrator’s Proposal from Begbies Traynor (Central) LLP earlier this week and have reviewed it. A copy can be found on our website at: https://coop4.uk/documents. It is 47 pages in length. The significant highlight is:
“As mentioned earlier, the Company acted as the managing person(s) on behalf of the Co-op’s. Funds totalling £6,882,050 has been transferred into a separate administration estate bank account pending specialist legal advice and a reconciliation exercise, if required.”
Comments:
- The good news is that some money has been found and is currently being ring fenced. It is not known if the amount represents all of the Coop 4 funds received from members as some were paying incrementally, but it appears that there may be some shortfall compared with the total funds that members have invested.
- The frustrating news is that Begbies is still obtaining specialist legal advice. Please note that Begbies is required by law to issue this report within eight weeks of the start of administration. However, they are waiting for legal advice before acting. We will be contacting them shortly to request again that they define a timeframe by which they will receive the advice.
- The board met with an insolvency law firm (Leonard Curtis) free of charge in preparation for the administrator’s proposals. Now that we have received these proposals, they will be reviewing them and other documents such as the customer agreement for their insights as to if there are any legal avenues that we might consider. We particularly want to understand what legal questions Begbies might have about the ring-fenced money. These initial calls are being provided free of charge and we are grateful to Leonard Curtis for their advice and support. Ongoing support would need to be paid for.
- The Administrator’s proposals provide routes for raising concerns about the conduct of Ripple’s business, and former officers, and also allow us to vote on certain aspects of the proposals. We are collating advice on the most effective way to make any representations.
Fundraising
We were incredibly grateful to see the results of the poll at our General Meeting that many members indicated a willingness to donate some money to support legal action (and other critical expenses) if needed. We are not quite at that point, but want to be open that fundraising is on the horizon should we come to the conclusion that this offers the best chance of a positive outcome for our members.
The outline of how it would work:
- Members donate via GoFundMe to support legal action and other minor expenses such as the domain name, email services, and registered office/mail forwarding already purchased.
- A small donation from even some of the Coop’s 7000 members could provide a significant fund.
- If the board determines the money is not needed at all, the money can be refunded via the same platform.
- Money would be held in a Coop 4 bank account and be controlled by the Coop 4 board.
- If excess money remains, it could not be returned to donors, but held by the Coop in case of future need for funds, or donated to an appropriate cause in line with members’ wishes.
Chargebacks and Section 75 claims
An increasing number of Coop 4 members are reporting success in using their bank or credit card companies’ chargeback or Section 75 claims process to get a return of their money. Status is being tracked in a spreadsheet and there are helpful tabs providing crowd-sourced guidance: https://coop4.uk/s75.
There is also a volunteer-run WhatsApp community: https://coop4.uk/whatsapp.
Please note that the WhatsApp group is not run by the Coop’s board of directors and any opinions given by directors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the board.
Board Minutes
The recently approved board meeting minutes have now been published on the Coop 4 website – see https://coop4.uk/minutes.
We seek to publish the historic board minutes in due course.
Didn’t receive this update via email?
If you are a member of the Coop and reading this update on the Coop4 website or social media, but didn’t get a copy in email then:
- The email has been blocked as Spam / Junk Mail. Make sure you are receiving emails from us – please check your spam folder – we also recommend you add [email protected] to your “safe senders” list
- If your email address has changed since you registered with Ripple, update us – email [email protected].
FAQ
If you have any questions we have published some FAQs at https://coop4.uk/faq, if you can’t find an answer, please fill in the form on our website. We’ll answer as many questions as possible by updating the FAQs.
With best wishes,
Tom, Klaus & Sam
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