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Globo Administrators Report – There’s No Money Left

Post Date: December 22, 2015

The Administrators of Globo Plc have published their initial report into the affairs of the company. It makes for depressing reading. In essence one might sum it up in the phrase "There's no money left" which was the infamous wording of a note left by one UK Treasury Minister to his successor. In this case, even the secured creditors (Barclays Bank in the lead), are unlikely to get paid in full and all unsecured creditors and shareholders will get nil. The assets ...

What to do with your NS&I 65+ Bond

Post Date: December 19, 2015

Many readers might have taken out the Government's offering of NS&I 65+ Guaranteed Growth Bonds a year ago when they were made available. They offered a very attractive rate of interest of 2.80% gross on the one year version, but these are now about to mature so investors have to decide what to do with them. What are the options? You can cash them in. Or you can re-invest the proceeds in another one year term bond at 1.45%, and that's not ...

New VCT Rules and Knowledge Intensive Businesses

Post Date: December 18, 2015

I attended the Annual General Meeting of Northern Venture Trust (NVT) yesterday - one of the more successful VCTs. Management representative Tim Levett gave us a briefing on the impact of the new "draconian rules" (as he called them) for VCTs arising from EU regulations. His criticism also arose from the fact that the legislation is effectively retrospective as it impacts both "old money" from past fund raisings and new money. One particular oddity is that the amount of money than can ...

When Brokers Go Bust

Post Date: December 15, 2015

"When Brokers Go Bust" was the title of a fascinating article in Investors Chronicle on 11/12/2015. It covered the impact on investors when their stockbroker goes out of business. That's pretty uncommon you might think. But it revealed the surprising fact that in the last five years alone more than 400 investment firms have gone belly up, based on data from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). It spelled out two particular problems: 1) the difficulty in untangling pooled nominee accounts (which ...

CentralNic Placing Annoys Private Investors

Post Date: December 8, 2015

This morning (8/12/2015), CentralNic Group announced the acquisition of Australian company Instra Group. Total cost is AU$33 million payable in cash and shares which will be supported by a mixture of debt and the issuance of new shares in a placing. Overall the new shares to be issued to the sellers and to institutional investors will represent 31% of the new overall equity so there is substantial dilution of existing investors taking place. But what is likely to annoy private investors is ...