Documented Case

Oenofuture Limited (Oeno Group)

A City of London fine wine merchant that sold wine and champagne as an investment stopped trading in December 2025. Trading Standards warned customers they may not get their money back, and a compulsory winding-up order followed.

Investment type: Fine wine and champagne investment
Documented investor losses: Losses reported to run into millions; final position subject to liquidation
Date / period: Ceased trading December 2025; compulsory winding-up order 4 March 2026
Relevant organisation: High Court / City of London Trading Standards
Nature of the matter: Insolvency — compulsory liquidation following Trading Standards intervention

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The investment

Oeno Group, trading from premises near the Royal Exchange in the City of London, sold fine wine and champagne as an investment. The associated company Oenofuture Limited held the bulk of the wine assets.

What investors were told

Customers understood that they had purchased and owned specific bottles and cases, held in professional storage on their behalf, and that those holdings could be traded or delivered on request.

What went wrong

Oenofuture Limited stopped trading abruptly in December 2025. The City of London Corporation's Trading Standards Service intervened and publicly warned customers that they may not get their money back.

Serious questions arose as to whether the wine customers had paid for existed in the quantities recorded, and whether it had been correctly allocated to the individual customers said to own it.

Investor impact

Individual customers reported missing holdings, in reported cases running to several thousand pounds each, with aggregate losses reported in the press as running into millions. A final figure will depend on the liquidation.

Regulatory, insolvency and court action

A provisional liquidator was appointed to Oenofuture Limited in February 2026, and the High Court made a compulsory winding-up order on 4 March 2026, appointing a liquidator.

The court indicated that the process would be lengthy given the difficulty of establishing what stock existed and to whom it belonged.

Current documented position

The liquidation is ongoing. Recovery prospects for customers remain uncertain and depend substantially on whether individual title to identifiable stock can be established.

Key Lesson

In physical asset investments, the decisive question is title. Investors should hold storage records in their own name, from an independent bonded warehouse, evidencing the specific units they own.

Source & Further Information

Oenofuture Limited — provisional liquidation and winding-up reporting
The Drinks Business / City of London Trading Standards — published January to March 2026
View the official source

These case studies summarise matters recorded in public sources including FCA publications, Insolvency Service and Serious Fraud Office material on GOV.UK, court judgments and the Companies House register. They are provided for information only, are not legal advice, and do not describe work carried out by BJM Recovery Ltd for any client. Where an investigation or set of proceedings remains open, the position stated is the position recorded at the date of the cited source.

BJM Recovery Ltd

How We Approach Investment Loss Cases

Every investment recovery matter is assessed individually. The circumstances of the investment, the available evidence, the parties involved and the applicable recovery process will determine the appropriate course of action.

Our starting point in any matter is the documentation. We reconstruct the investment chronologically from agreements, payment records, statements, correspondence and marketing material, and we establish precisely which entities and individuals were involved at each stage, and in what capacity.

We then examine what is on the public record: the Companies House position, any insolvency appointments, regulatory publications, enforcement action and court proceedings. Public records frequently determine which routes remain open, whether that is a creditor claim in an insolvency, a claim against a regulated party in the advice or pension chain, participation in a distribution administered by a regulator, or civil proceedings.

Where a matter has been formally referred to us, we deal with the referring organisation directly and work within the process that applies to that referral.

If you have lost money through an investment that has failed, become insolvent or stopped communicating, we can review the information available and set out the position clearly.

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Have you experienced something similar?

Investment losses can be complex and every situation is different. If you have lost money through an investment that has failed, become insolvent or stopped communicating, our team can assess the information available and discuss the potential next steps.

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