Ecosse Management Services Limited

A trading loss of $25 million by a Canadian client with a checkered past has emerged as the principal reason for the collapse of a Bahamas-based financial services group earlier this year.Caledonia Corporate Management Limited allowed 39-year-old Ontario resident George Georgiou to start trading without providing any cash or security of his own, instead lending him millions of dollars and pledging other clients' assets as collateral, which were subsequently sold to meet a margin call. As Caledonia's problems mounted, the firm's principals then siphoned off virtually all of its remaining assets for no consideration to new companies they created, managed and controlled, leaving behind a shell that had unaudited assets of US$269,113 and liabilities that management listed as US$57,391 but which, in reality, will include the full amount of Georgiou's trading losses.

Bahamas-based investment firm Caledonia Corporate Management Group Limited went into voluntary liquidation on February 12, 2008 after reportedly incurring an estimated $20 million in trading losses. Anthony Kikivarakis, of Deloitte & Touche (Bahamas), has been appointed liquidator.Caledonia applied for liquidation after consultation with its local regulator, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, which licensed the firm as a broker-dealer, according to a news article in The Tribune, in the Bahamas.