18th December 2008

First Victory For Charities Group

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Newly-formed charities’ action group, Save Our Savings, has secured its first victory as the announcement was made that they will have a place on the Creditors’ Committee for UK bank Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander (KSF) that was put into administration in October this year.

Save Our Savings, which is led by Cats Protection and Naomi House Children’s Hospice, represents 27 charities that collectively have a potential loss of £50 million due to the collapse of the Icelandic-owned bank. The group has been formed to increase awareness of this issue and to ensure that charities have a bigger voice as they campaign for the return of their funds.

It is very unusual to have charities involved in an administration process of this nature and scale, and the situation they find themselves in at this current time is unique.

Dominic Sullivan, Cats Protection’s Director of Legal Services who helped form the action group, said, “Charities that have been affected by the collapse of KSF are now working together so that we can present a united front in the battle to secure the recovery of charitable funds.

“Now that we have secured our place on the creditors committee we have access to more information and will be able to address questions directly to the administrators of KSF, Ernst and Young.”

Cats Protection is the UK’s leading cat welfare charity, helping 157,000 cats and kittens each year. The charity relies on 6,800 volunteers and 500 staff, to carry out vital cat rehoming and welfare work, and has been in existence for over 80 years.

The charity has £11.2 million frozen with KSF, and new capital projects have been put on hold. For every one cat in the charity’s care there are many more waiting to come in, hence Cats Protection has plans to build new cat Adoption Centres at Lisburn, in Northern Ireland and Gildersome, Yorkshire. Both these projects are currently at risk.

Over 25 charities have come together and formed the action group Save Our Savings, and are now looking into ways of putting the charities case to the Government in the hope of securing the return of all charitable funds.

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