Investors who held pension savings through the Financial Conduct Authority-regulated broker SVS Securities have learned that the SVS Securities pension fund scandal has claimed another scalp: the FCA has fined former chief executive Demetrios Hadjigeorgiou £56,400 and banned him from holding any senior management or significant influence function in UK financial services.
The action closes the loop on a coordinated enforcement effort against three former SVS leaders, and it follows parallel regulatory action as far afield as Dubai.
How the SVS Securities Pension Fund Scheme Worked
SVS Securities was a discretionary fund manager (a firm that invests on behalf of clients without seeking their approval for each trade). According to the FCA’s press release on the coordinated action against three SVS individuals, former CEO and majority shareholder Kulvir Virk recklessly built a business model designed to channel customer money into high-risk, illiquid bonds connected to SVS directors and a close business associate of Virk himself.
Those bonds paid undisclosed commissions of up to 12% of customers’ investments to SVS and to unauthorised introducers. Customers, many of them pension savers, were never told.
Hadjigeorgiou joined as finance director and later became CEO, serving until shortly before the firm entered special administration. The FCA found he failed to exercise due skill, care and diligence in managing SVS. On one occasion, he failed to challenge a decision to reduce the value of customers’ bond holdings by 10% when they sought to sell, a haircut that generated £359,800 for the firm while customers were not clearly informed of what was happening. Some lost a portion of their pension as a direct result.
Importantly, the FCA’s Decision Notice, dated 25 April 2024, assessed Hadjigeorgiou’s misconduct as a level 2 or 3 breach and did not characterise it as reckless or deliberate, distinguishing his conduct from that of Virk. The FCA also noted that Hadjigeorgiou remained at SVS after it entered special administration to assist the administrators.
The FCA had flagged concerns to SVS as early as September 2017, predating a regulatory rule change that prohibited commissions for discretionary fund managers. Those warnings went unheeded.
The Scale of the Losses and Who Else Was Punished
SVS eventually entered special administration and was dissolved. The FCA confirmed that 879 customers had placed a combined £69.1 million into bonds through the firm. Those bonds later defaulted, leaving customers unlikely to recover more than a fraction of their money.
The original Decision Notice proposed a penalty of £84,600 against Hadjigeorgiou. He referred the matter to the Upper Tribunal (the independent body that hears appeals against FCA decisions) but later settled with the regulator and withdrew his referral, reducing the final fine to £56,400.
The other two individuals faced stiffer consequences. Virk was fined £215,500 and permanently banned from UK financial services. David Stephen, former head of compliance, faced a proposed fine of £52,100 and a ban from senior management roles, according to the FCA’s June 2024 coordinated action announcement.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: ‘Building up a pension for retirement is one of the most important investments you can make.’ She added: ‘Where senior leaders fail to put customer interests first, we will act.’
The enforcement did not stop at UK borders. The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) issued its own Decision Notice against Virk in October 2024, according to the DFSA’s regulatory actions register. The DFSA then announced on 9 December 2025 that it was formally restricting Virk from operating in or from the Dubai International Financial Centre, following the FCA’s earlier action. Full details of that restriction are on the DFSA’s news page on the Virk restriction.
The FCA’s Final Notice against Hadjigeorgiou was published on 19 August 2026, according to regulatory intelligence service RegLabs, which flagged the notice on its professional network.
What This Means If You Hold Pension Savings Through a Fund Manager
The SVS Securities pension fund case is a reminder that discretionary fund managers have wide latitude to invest your money, and that undisclosed conflicts of interest (commissions paid by the issuers of the products your money is placed into) are a specific regulatory red line.
If your SIPP or ISA uses a discretionary manager, it is worth checking that the firm publishes a clear conflicts-of-interest policy and that any bonds or structured products in the portfolio come with full disclosure of any payments received from issuers. The FCA’s senior manager regime, which holds named executives personally accountable, is the mechanism designed to prevent exactly the conduct seen at SVS.
The next test of that regime’s deterrence effect will come when David Stephen’s case reaches its conclusion.
