Cllr. Johar Khan appointed chair of the LBWF Pension Committee: cue questions

A week or so ago, one of Cllr. Johar Khan’s oldest confidants e-mailed me with the news that the great man had been appointed chair of the LBWF Pension Committee (PC).

At first, I thought he was pulling my leg, because Cllr. Khan has been out of the limelight for some time, but having checked, it’s true.

Indeed, Cllr. Khan not only chaired the most recent meeting of the PC, but then issued a statement on ‘ethical investments’. 

It’s certainly great to have him back in the public eye, because he’s clearly fun.

In 2015, Private Eye reported on his antics as follows:

Two years later, a profile of him for this blog (see links) started thus:

‘Cllr. Johar Khan, the Labour member for Markhouse, has always been a bit of a card.

Spats with colleagues and adversaries, political implosions, party defections, suspensions, investigations, big posh cars, personalised number plates, flash weddings, and an impish way with facts – his back pages feature the lot’.

Yet putting this amusing history to one side, nagging questions lurk. Cllr. Khan now has been given a highly responsible role, and rewarded with a £11,443 p.a. special allowance.  But do we really know enough about his prior career, and his competences? And if we don’t, how can we be sure he is the right man for the job?

To seek answers, the following looks at the available evidence.

A seemingly obvious starting point is to turn to Cllr. Khan’s register of interests form, as this requires details of ‘employment, office, trade, profession or vocation’, and ‘employer’.

However, in Cllr. Khan’s case, the form is of no help, because some time ago he convinced LBWF Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes that such information was ‘sensitive’, and therefore need not be declared in public (see links for the background).

Luckily, however, there is quite a lot about Cllr. Khan on the web, some posted by others, but some posted by himself. 

Currently, Cllr. Khan’s own LinkedIn page lists his ‘Experience’ thus:

Cllr. Khan’s employment at a trio of high street banks and Openreach requires no further comment.

As for Rangewell Ltd. (ref. no. 09362490), it’s a business finance broker, which was incorporated in 2014, and despite four near compulsory strike offs, still trades.

That leaves Cllr. Khan’s seven years as ‘Director Arcadian Finance’, which, regrettably, is a less straightforward matter.

Companies House (‘the official registrar of companies in the UK’) does not appear to list an active, dormant, or dissolved company called Arcadian Finance, and a Google search throws up only one or two references, which anyway lead up blind allies.

However, what Companies House does establish is that Cllr. Khan once (and only once) has been a director, this at a ‘micro company’ he founded in October 2016 called Fast Track Lending Ltd. (ref. no. 10422644) which was described as engaged in ‘Activities of mortgage finance companies’.

Consulting Fast Track Lending Ltd.’s website of the time yields the further information in the small print that it was an independent brokerage specialising in ‘non-regulated finance’.

As it transpires, Cllr. Khan’s directorship at Fast Track Lending Ltd. was a short-lived affair, since at the start of May 2017, he resigned (though the company, still a ‘micro’, remains active to this day).

But there is one further intriguing detail, because, again according to the company’s website of the time, in 2016 and 2017 Fast Track Lending Ltd. used Arcadian Finance as a ‘trading style’, in other words a name it adopted out in the market.

More recently, there have been several related developments which add to the sense of confusion. According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) register, in February 2020, a credit broker called A.J. Sterling Partnerships Ltd. (ref. no. 11203916), which had been incorporated two years earlier, took over control of the Arcadian Finance ‘trading style’. 

And then, in June 2022, A.J. Sterling Partnerships Ltd. changed its name to Risecap Ltd., and according to its website, the latter now features Cllr. Khan as an ‘employee’.

Risecap Ltd. claims it ‘has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and CFOs [Chief Financial Officers] to rise above financial challenges and grow their businesses’, which seems all to the good.

Checking with Companies House, though, produces a rather less upbeat picture: in the five years to 2023 (the last time it posted accounts), A.J. Sterling Partnerships Ltd./Risecap Ltd. only ever employed one person, its sole director and owner; while its net assets fell from a peak of £6,848 in 2021 to just £2 last year. 

Unsurprisingly, then, one prominent company which sells business intelligence classifies Risecap as a ‘micro-sized’, and gives it a ‘health’ rating of 1.5 out of 5. It may not have helped that, while A.J. Sterling Partnerships Ltd. was registered with the FCA, Risecap Ltd. isn’t.

Reflecting on the previous paragraphs, it is reassuring that Cllr. Khan has worked for a number of blue-chip companies, not least three high street banks.

Nevertheless, some of his other business activities provoke unease, because they are on the fringes of the mainstream and somewhat opaque.

There is no suggestion that Cllr. Khan has broken any law or regulation, but he clearly could have been a good deal more forthcoming had he wanted to be. That even his own LinkedIn page appears to be less than authoritative is certainly disappointing.

In conclusion, the PC plays an important role, safeguarding the interests of Town Hall staff, of course, but also the borough’s residents more generally, who after all indirectly stump up some of cash for pension contributions. 

Both groups need to be confident that the PC is being judiciously led, and that there are no hidden corners. 

Whether Cllr. Khan is the right man to inspire such confidence, only time will tell.