Mr. Fawaad Sheikh of the E11 BID Co.: the life and times of a local business leader

Last week’s Waltham Forest Guardian, as has been noted, featured E11 BID Co. board chairman Mr. Fawaad Sheikh pontificating on his dislike of ‘free riders’:

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/13587272._I_don_t_like_free_riders___E11_Bid_director_after_sending_bailiffs_to_collect_controversial_levy/

Appropriate modesty is obviously not Mr. Sheikh’s strongest suit. After all, it is a matter of record that under his stewardship the E11 BID Co. was chaotically run, failed to pay its taxes, and accrued various fines and County Court Judgments. And then of course there is the little matter of all the public money that went the E11 BID Co.’s way, which LBWF finds it so difficult to account for; and the E11 BID Co.’s office space, apparently gifted by LBWF without any contract being in place. And so on. The old phrase about stones and glasshouses seems never more apposite.

But putting these particular issues to one side, what of Mr. Sheikh’s wider career beyond the E11 BID Co.? Is this somebody who has achieved so much in business that we can forgive him a modicum of hubris?

Judging by his current LinkedIn page, Mr. Sheikh certainly believes himself to be a bit of a hot shot. He claims to have been a franchise operator, shareholder, managing director, and mentor. And he is bullish about his companies, with a description of Jumpstart Business Solutions Ltd., for example, including the following: ‘As well as offering customized databases and web solutions we have now diversified into related areas that can identify gaps in optimising business efficiency. We continue to offer solutions for advertising & marketing campaigns, business development, licensing & planning and retail support. Training, Mentoring as well as sustainable construction consultancy are also still part of our key services’.

However, the reality, it transpires, is somewhat different, and can be summed up in the following table:

Sources: DueDil and Companies House; correct as at 12/08/15.

Mr. Sheikh is no doubt to be congratulated for his entrepreneurial zeal, as on average his companies had only one other director. But that accepted, there seems little else to celebrate.

Five of Mr. Sheikh’s companies are now defunct. Of these, two appear never to have traded, while the other three were hardly big hitters and in addition all ended up with negative net assets – meaning that they had insufficient funds to settle their various liabilities. Looking at a couple of the cases in more detail adds some extra colour. According to the website CompanyCheck, Mr. Sheikh’s strongest performer in terms of turnover, Cyber Buffs Ltd., had the following unimpressive ‘key financials’:

As for Jumpstart Business Solutions Ltd., where Mr. Sheikh was the sole director, Companies House records reveal a tempestuous history, with Mr. Sheikh’s appointment first terminated and then re-confirmed in mid-2012 (begging the question, by whom?); and the company struck off, dissolved, and then restored in 2014, before its final demise a year later.

So much for the past. Mr. Sheikh’s only current business involvement, outside the E11 BID Co., is a directorship with Waltham Forest Ltd. (though strangely he omits to mention this on LinkedIn). Yet here again, matters are less than straightforward. The company originally had two other directors, but their appointments were terminated after only a few months. In July 2015, compulsory strike off was first threatened and then suspended. Meanwhile, Companies House records reveal that so far no accounts have been submitted, and the 2013-14 set are ‘overdue’.

What does all this add up to? No impropriety is (or has been) alleged, and starting and dissolving companies in sequence is hardly unusual. But comparing Mr. Sheikh’s LinkedIn pages with the reality of his business life does appear to lay bare some rather obvious dissonance. For all his talk about business, he seems not to be an especially successful practitioner. And of course, the liabilities he has amassed may have included debts to both people and institutions, including HMRC. This being the case, let us hope that on dissolution, Mr. Sheikh paid up and left no-one at a loss – did not, in other words, behave like a ‘free-rider’.

1 Comment

1. 

   Truth & Lies - August 24, 2015, 6:20 am

   Also of considerable interest when it comes to Fawad Sheikh is what exactly is his relationship with Cllr Clyde Loakes and the Leytonstone Labour Party and has that relationship impeded LBWF in maintaining proper controls over the E11 BID and other FS influenced projects?

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