The widow of a man who died while waiting for payments from a property fund has taken up the fight to regain access to the money.
The widow, who contacted FT Adviser, confirmed that her late husband Ian Ducker passed away in February 2022 aged 69, after suffering two heart attacks.
He had set up a small self-administered pension scheme in 2014 under his construction company, of which he was the sole trustee.
He had invested around £300,000 into the Carlton James Commercial Real Estate Fund and was receiving monthly payments until the pandemic struck in 2020.
According to his widow, Aleksandra Ducker, the payments stopped abruptly, without any explanation at the time.
As a result, Mr Ducker took out multiple loans to make ends meet.
According to the widow, the stress of the situation exacerbated her husband’s ill health.
The couple were living in Spain at the time and Mr Ducker’s plan was to spend his retirement relying on payments from his investment in the fund, which he expected to be around £4,000 a month.
“He had moved us to Spain and it was his plan to retire on this fund,” said Mrs Ducker.
But according to the widow, the payments stopped a few years before he died, meaning “he was so stressed at the end of his life; it was really cruel”.
The share offer
After her husband’s death, Mrs Ducker moved back to the UK and is living in Buckinghamshire, where she is now having to work again.
She became the trustee of the scheme after Mr Ducker’s death, and in April 2023, she received a letter proposing an “alternative exit strategy” to buy back shares from investors, offering Mrs Ducker a lump sum of $244,388 (£186,366).
While this was less than what she wanted, Mrs Ducker said she accepted the offer in the hope of not having to deal with the group again.
Two years on, Mrs Ducker said she is still waiting for the settlement payment.
The letter promising this, which has been seen by FT Adviser, is signed by the Carlton James Real Estate team and lists a Carlton James Group website on the letter heading, with a Carlton James Global Investment Group logo.
Though there are no companies with those precise names on UK Companies House, Carlton James Private and Commercial is still active, according to Companies House.
Similarly named companies listed on Companies House are Carlton James Global Management, which is in liquidation, and Carlton James International Ltd, which was dissolved in June 2025.
These companies do not appear to have had any connection to the matter.
At the start of 2020, Mr Ducker had $322,458 (£245,901) in his pension. Mrs Ducker believes she should also be reimbursed for the loss of interest that would have accrued, had she been paid monthly instalments between 2020 and 2024.
She said: “I haven’t received a single penny from these people [the Carlton James Commercial Real Estate Fund].”
In May, a letter from Carlton James Group, which is not listed on Companies House, was sent to all shareholders.
The letter, seen by FT Adviser, said: “It has not been possible to make additional returns to investors in the fund since the start of 2020, as Carlton James Real Estate Ltd has not received any payment of interest on the underlying loans from the developers in the USA since that time.”
There is no company called Carlton James Real Estate listed on UK Companies House.
Mrs Ducker said she had contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service but was told her case could not be pursued as Carlton James Group is not FCA registered.
She said for the past five years investors have been given “hope and then let down yet again”.
What went wrong?
The Carlton James Commercial Real Estate Fund lends money to commercial developers in the US.
At the end of 2024, a letter to shareholders, seen by FT Adviser, said it believed market recovery was starting slowly after being “affected beyond all expectation” by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Communication from the commercial real estate fund said because the borrowers, who are the commercial developers, did not make interest payments throughout 2020 and the start of 2021, no income was paid to investors in the fund.
It also said there has been a “very limited” market for developments in the US, which eventually funds the repayment of loans.
For this reason, representatives of the fund wrote to investors saying they do not want to “force sales at a much reduced price”.
We do appreciate that this has been an incredibly long and frustrating process, and there are many times that we have thought simply about liquidating the fund.
The real estate financing fund is still listed on the Carlton James Group website, which states the team has “successfully built a hospitality development and land acquisition portfolio throughout key regions in the US”.
A letter to shareholders in the fund, dated October 16, said the entity is “actively working” to speed up the process for the alternative strategy to complete.
The letter, seen by FT Adviser, read: “We do appreciate that this has been an incredibly long and frustrating process, and there are many times that we have thought simply about liquidating the fund.
“However we are still working to ensure that investors do not incur serious losses that external immediate liquidation would undoubtedly bring.
“We do now finally see a clear short term road map to the goal we have been working on for several years, and of course we will let you know as soon as we receive an updated timeframe from our third-party partners.”
Enquiries made
The FCA register shows Carlton James Property Asset Management Limited stopped being registered as an appointed representative by the regulator in 2013 and a company by this name was dissolved in 2016.
The website for Carlton James Group lists its offices as being in an industrial estate in Chippenham, though the latest letter to shareholders lists a serviced office building in a cul-de-sac in Royal Wootton Bassett.
This is also the address of active company Carlton James Private and Commercial Ltd, which lists Robert Holmes as a director and shows Simon Calton as having been a director between 2014 and 2021.
The website for Carlton James Group states it can be contacted via its “global management company” Carlton James Global Management, which went into liquidation in 2024.
The Carlton James Group website claims the group was founded by CEO Simon Calton in 2012. His LinkedIn said the company was founded to: “Provide innovative solutions for investors to receive great returns whilst simultaneously offering funding solutions for companies, whose business showed they could continue to outperform the market, especially in times of recession.”
Companies House shows Calton has been connected with three companies whose names included the words Carlton James, since 2014. It shows he resigned as director of Carlton James Private and Commercial in April 2021 after seven years.
Another company, Carlton James International was dissolved earlier this year. Carlton James Global Management is now in liquidation.
It is listed as having overdue accounts on Companies House with an appointment of voluntary liquidators posted in August 2024.
There is a further filing for a company, Carlton James Group Inc, on the US Securities and Exchange Commission with one upload from 2020 listing the same Wootton Bassett address.
There is no connection between this corporation and the matter relayed in this article.
This filing states: “Carlton James is a private investment group specialising in diversified portfolios across different global asset classes across varying jurisdictions, industries and economies with the goal of investing in a diverse portfolio with a capital protection focus and the potential to generate higher returns and secure their capital against global financial upset.”
There is no documentary evidence linking these companies to the case of the Duckers.
It lists Simon Calton as the director of this company.
Carlton James representatives, Simon Calton and Robert Holmes, did not respond to many requests via different media, including written letters, for comment from FT Adviser.
tara.o’connor@ft.com