directors

1626 days ago

Vindication! Vindication! 6 years of warnings from ShareProphets: Now PureCircle “discovers” even more fraud!

We have been warning that Purecircle (PURE), a company once valued at a billion dollars was a disaster waiting to happen for more than six years. The shares were already suspended over the inventory fraud, now other “matters of concern” have emerged and the CEO is stepping aside pro tem.  This company is almost certainly toast. City adbisors named below should hang their heads in shame and return fees, directors should go to jail.

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3629 days ago

The Sort of Director who does not get it, who wants only upside risk

I wanna tell you a story…it is a true story but not from the great Max Bygraves. It is from me and from a company meeting a while back and it is why I almost despair of some on public markets.

I shall not name the company but it is trying to raise a couple of million and for some reason I was at the presentation the other week. The two key men sounded pretty impressive and handled questions about strategy, assets and that sort of matter pretty well. I asked about pay and there was no troughing going on.

And so I asked how much cash they had invested in the company. Er…..

One fellow said he had vended in the odd asset – which did not exactly seem core going forward. The other said he had been granted options. “So to answer my question you have not actually stuck a penny of your own cash in have you?” Er, um, ah, but we could be earning far more elsewhere, blah, blah, blah.

I persisted. So how much are you putting into the placing then? I have options said one. The other said that if there are any shares left he might take a few.

As I explained that options were a one way bet it was clear that my questioning was not going down well. The look on their faces suggested that I had asked “how many time have you masturbated this week?” But that is not what I asked.

As The Sheriff of AIM, I merely tried to establish whether their interests were aligned 

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3823 days ago

Greed is Good. In fact it is absolutely wonderful!

I am getting attacked by a variety of fruitcakes of the UKIP variety for suggesting that Labour’s living wage plan is a bad idea. I intend dealing with the merry band of nutters that is UKIP a bit later this weekend but for now I stand up in defence of greed. Greed, as Gordon Gekko noted, is Good. 

The nutters seem to believe that a) UK workers should be paid more per se and b) that there should be statutory limits on director pay/shareholder returns with more of the spoils of any profits made returned to the workers. I shall start with directors.

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