The developments in SNS have come as a hard blow to a number of small Maltese investors who have lost what for them are substantial amounts of money in it.

They told The Malta Independent on Sunday some days ago that a local company, All Invest, had advised many of its clients to put their money in SNS, verbally guaranteeing the capital even though, as said, the bank had been in trouble for quite some time.

Frans Faas, an activist investor, who has set up a foundation to represent the interests of subordinated debt holders – whose securities had a total face value of about €1.8 billion – and to challenge the decision to nationalise SNS Reaal, told this paper yesterday that All Invest have confirmed to him they are winding up their business. This information could not be verified independently..

All Invest and MFSP Financial had also been involved in another investment that ended up badly for investors.

In November 2009, MFSP Financial launched the ARM Asset Backed Bonds (Tranche 9) 7.5 per cent per annum maturing in 2014.

The bonds are issued by ARM Asset Backed Securities S.A as part of the $250 million ARM Asset Backed Securitisation Programme, which is listed on the Irish Stock Exchange.

Subsequently, this investment proved to be less promising and many investors lost money on it.

In the SNS case, local investors were listed as shareholders and thus, as stated earlier, lost all their investments.