Investors in failed stockbroker Pacific Continental are being offered help filing claims with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Brooklands Stockbrokers – which bought Pacific Continentals’ client list – is writing to all 8,000 investors on the list offering them help in filing out the forms.

Brooklands Stockbrokers is currently in the process of setting up as an advisory stockbroker. To get help in filing an FSCS claim you will have to agree to become a client of Brooklands Stockbrokers. Brooklands says it has no connection with Pacific Continental and will only advise on ‘FTSE’ companies.

Brooklands Stockbrokers is a subsidiary of Brooklands Group, which also owns Brooklands Securities. Brooklands Securities chairman Stephen Alexander, says: ‘I used to do a lot of litigation work in the financial services sector and a lot of people who lost money and could have made a claim did not. Most people find the FSCS forms intimidating.’

Alexander previously founded Class Law Solicitors which represents minority investors in shareholder actions. Asked if his new departure, Brooklands Stockbrokers, will advise on FTSE Fledging stocks (the small caps of the main market) Alexander, said: ‘No. We are established FTSE. We are as far away from the Pacific model as you can imagine.’

Brooklands Securities – previously know as Caspian Stockbrokers – bought Pacific Continental’s shareholder list from the broker’s administrator Smith & Williamson. The company then purchased Navigator Corporate Finance, which is authorised by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), and renamed it Brooklands Stockbrokers. The later deal is now awaiting on FSA approval.

Smith & Williamson is due to complete an investigation into Pacific Continental’s remaining assets by the end of this month. At that point private investors with money and shares frozen in accounts will learn if they get anything back. But press reports are speculating there will be little assets remaining meaning victims will have to apply to the FSCS. The FSCS covers claims that failed financial services firms cannot meet.

Since the FSCS – which reports say may have to pay £240 million – is partly funded by other stockbrokers, the Pacific case will put pressure on other unscrupulous stockbrokers.