Nigel Farage financial newsletter secures lifeline

The investment research publisher behind Nigel Farage’s financial newsletter has secured a £1.5 million lifeline to avert potential collapse after suffering a loss of almost £1 million last year.
Southbank Investment Research made a £922,601 loss before tax in 2023 and its liabilities exceeded assets by more than £6.2 million, according to latest company filings.
Auditors at Clinton Higgins have raised a red flag over its future for a second year running, saying that there is “material uncertainty, which may cast significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
Southbank publishes a collection of free and paid-for email newsletters and podcasts that include The Fleet Street Letter, fronted by Farage to bring readers “insight and intelligence from within the markets and corridors of power”.
In the 12 months to the end of December last year, turnover fell by more than half to £2.9 million, from £6.7 million in 2022. Total losses widened by 50 per cent from £606,526.
Southbank is ultimately owned by Agora, a holding company based in Cyprus and controlled by Francisco Costas, an Argentinian businessman. It took a loan from another company within the group that had a balance of £1.48 million at the end of last year. Agora has agreed to provide financial support to cover all liabilities for at least 12 months.
Directors have implemented an improvement plan “diversifying the company’s offering and discontinuing some lossmaking publications”. The headcount was cut from 37 to 16 last year, shaving the total wage bill from £2.2 millon to £1.2 million. The board has “reasonable expectation” that the company has resources to continue “for the forseeable future”.
Farage, a former commodities trader who joined Southbank Investment Research in 2020, has not written for the publication since being elected MP for Clacton in July. His most recent newsletter in November 2023 was titled How net zero gives the green light to a new slave trade and mass pollution.
He has emphasised that he does not personally give investment advice, but is described on Southbank’s website as “arguably the most influential British figure of the last half-century … with a canny knack for spotting big changes on the horizon”.