3841 days ago
A copy of the Northern Petroleum (NOP) annual report lands on my desk. Thud. A lot of trees went to produce this weighty tome which places undue prominence on 'elf n safey, Corporate & Social Responsibility, etc, etc. That is all a smokescreen of sanctimony to mask an act of brutal AIM Cesspit crony capitaism. Naturally I turn straight to page 87 of 96 and there it is. Bonuses for directors! WTF?
In 2013 the bonuses for Northern’s three executive directors were: Keith Bush (CEO) £30,000, Nick Morgan (FD) £24,000 and Graham Heard £20,000. In 2012 no directors were awarded bonuses.
I would point out that in 2013 Northern reported a loss before tax from continuing operations of 27.266 million Euro. The share price was 55p at the start of the year. It ended the year at 30p and is now 26p.
Heck if the company had only seen its shares slump by 30% rather than halve what sort on bonus would the lucky lads have picked up then? This is obviously a case where the interests of greedy directors are utterly non-aligned with those of shareholders. And also of staff. I note that given Northern’s vast cashburn, about half a dozen staff have been handed p45s in the past month or so. So let’s fire a few workers to pay for bonuses for directors who have destroyed shareholder value big time. Do you think that is right? I do not.
I put it to Keith Bush that this boardroom greed was just not acceptable and he replied that the bonuses were:
3971 days ago
On 17th December recruitment group ReThink (RTG) showed itself as a true posterboy for the AIM Cesspit by issuing a shed load of options which almost cannot but fail to hand free money to the board but the scandal is much worse as I can reveal today.
3991 days ago
The directors of AIM Cesspit listed recruitment group ReThink (RTG) have today shown themselves up as crony capitalists who do not give a flying wotsit about shareholders and are in it for themselves - they are greedy tossers. That should tell you all you need to know – do not own this stock.
The share price of this company is 5.875p – well down on the IPO. The board has today cancelled 11,484,364 options priced at between 6.75p and 11p which lapse between February 2015 and April 2018. And instead it had granted new options priced at just 6.12p lapsing between November 2016 and June 2021.
In other words, under the new scheme, if the company can deliver share price growth of just 1.3% per annum then every single one of these new options is free money for the board at the expense of shareholder dilution.
4140 days ago
Reach4Entertainment (R4E) the company formerly known as Pivot and before that First Artist has served up two great pieces of news today. The best is the departure of the grossly overpaid finance director Shirley Stapleton, but it gets better.
Stapleton was a legacy of the ancien regime which was marked for a central cost base which even by the standards of the AIM cesspit was bloated. Her package in 2011 was a salary of £178,000. Last year as Reach reported a small profit she trousered £175,000 plus a pension contribution of £8,000.
4150 days ago
This is a shocker. The directors of AIM Cesspit listed Patagonia Gold (PGD) are very well paid. They have significant equity in the company but they want more. They want shareholders to reprice their share options in order to “incentivise” them. This has to be passed at an AGM. Shareholders should tell these fat swine to bugger off and vote no. And here is why.
4153 days ago
Life is too short. I am making it simpler and so I have handed in my notice with immediate effect at Spreadbet Magazine to focus on this site, The Nifty Fifty, Shareprophets, UKInvestor Show and RMPC, working only with a small trusted team.
For what it is worth my last column published today read:
For what it is worth my last column published today read:
4185 days ago
Terry is well rewarded. His basic pay in 2012 was £402,000 and he got a cash bonus of £488,000 making a total of £890,000 up from £407,000. Inflation busting or what?
In addition, there is a note saying that Quindell made sales of £7,000 but bought goods and services totalling £99,000 from Indoor Golf City Limited, a company controlled by twitter obsessed Bob. Indoor Golf City?
4234 days ago
Shares in AIM listed New World Oil & Gas (NEW) were trading at 9.625p a year ago. Today they are at 1.85p. Shareholders have every reason to be unhappy with the board. But it gets worse. Much worse.
I start with the cost of the three executive directors. The CEO gets paid (via a service contract with a third party firm) a salary of $390,000 a year plus a $60,000 pension contribution plus $60,000 contribution to healthcare insurance. The two other executive directors have to soldier by on
4264 days ago
Once again this issue comes onto my radar screen as I ask of Sefton Resources (SER) the AIM listed company suing me for libel, how many flights for its chairman Jim Ellerton to and from his Hawaii mansion were paid for by the company? It is a simple question that Sefton declines to answer. If the answer was nil it would have said so. So I assume that it is a lot more than nil and would like to know the cost. As, I suspect, would shareholders who are down 99.5% since the IPO.
Of course the inverse correlation between shareholder return and director comfort at Sefton Resources will be my specialist subject when I eventually appear on Mastermind but this is not just a Sefton issue. Quite rightly, after two or three years of AIM delivering up fairly miserable returns for investors many directors are being asked to justify pay packages and bonuses which have seen them profit while investors who actually put up the risk capital to get these businesses started and keep them going are taking the sort of spanking that Max Mosely would enjoy! Am I allowed to say that any more under our new code of press suppression?
But what has not been nailed down has been the issue of director’s expenses.
4323 days ago
I met up with Roger Lawson of ShareSoc last week to chat about life and record a video ( see below). The son of a miner, Roger is a self made man and commands my respect for that. When I lash out at an aspect of AIM, the City establishment can dismiss me as a maverick. See if I care. When Roger says what he says, members of the establishment who may ignore me have to listen. And what he says can be pretty incendiary.
We discussed how the Nomad system is broken and how Roger would fix it. How fund managers fail to hold PLC boards to account and also how private investors can hold PLC boards to account. Roger did not hold back.
4368 days ago
There are two sorts of businesses on AIM. Those floated by entrepreneurs who retain a large stake in the enterprise and there are those where professional (if not always competent) managers have a relatively small equity stake. Sadly most AIM companies fall into the latter category and thus there can be a clear lack of alignment between the interests of those running such a company and those who own it: shareholders (editor interject – JJB, Plus, HMV ring a bell?!!). Thus we come to the great expenses scandal which will be, I sense, a story that will start to take off in 2013. It is always good to be ahead of the curve…
4390 days ago
Paul Scott is a smart investor and a good battler against boards which take the piss. Looming in his sights now is AIM listed property developer Inland (LSE:INL). The issue is boardroom pay versus shareholder return. And Scott is not wrong here. Inland is a good company but its directors Stephen Wicks and Nish Malde clearly have interests that are not aligned with those of shareholders. Let battle commence.
4442 days ago
You will be aware of my concerns about AIM listed Sefton Resources (SER) shares in which traded at 95p in 2001 and are 1.55p today. The company has yet to comment or issue legal proceedings about my article of Friday which invited it and its chairman Jim Ellerton to explain why successive RNS statements were not lies. This is a company that has raised equity by issuing shares 10 times in the past 3 years. Where does it all go? Have a guess.
4502 days ago
My pal John Lappin has produced a very good piece on the Lighthouse EGM in which he reckons that more than 30% of shareholders will certainly vote NO. And I know a few more – this number does not include any private investors who we know are all voting no. So the delisting proposal will not get the 75% it needs. Frankly it might even be defeated.
I explained earlier in the week why shareholders must make the effort to vote, should vote no and should then demand the head of Chairman David Hickey.
