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Patisserie and Interserve Administrations, plus Brexit latest

Post Date: March 16, 2019
Yesterday the administrators (KPMG) of Patisserie (CAKE) issued their initial report. It makes for grim reading. The hole in the accounts was much worse than previously thought with an overstatement of net assets of at least £94 million. That includes: Intangible assets overstated by £18m; Tangible assets overstated by £5m; Cash position overstated by £54m; Prepayments and debtors overstated by £7m; Creditors understated by £10m. The accounts were clearly a total fiction. It is uncertain whether there will even be sufficient assets ...
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Interserve Administration: I am very angry!

Post Date: March 15, 2019
I attended Interserve's General Meeting today and I am... ...angry with major shareholders, who didn't hold the board to account and couldn't be bothered to speak or vote today. ...angry with former board members who, in my opinion, did not properly exercise their corporate governance responsibilities. ...and angry with former executives who drove the Interserve ship onto the rocks... and were still well-rewarded. In short, a massive failure of corporate governance and corporate stewardship. Those responsible should hang their heads in shame. Government should consider ...
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FCA Makes Platform Switching Easier

Post Date: March 14, 2019
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have today announced some measures to improve competition in the platforms market. Experienced investors who use electronic trading platforms will be well aware of the problems of switching to another provider if they are dissatisfied with the service, wish to move to a cheaper provider or for other reasons such as consolidating on one provider or spreading their risk over several. It simply takes too long to move “in-specie” holdings from one platform to another  ̶  ...
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Superdry – Does It Need a Revolution?

Post Date: March 14, 2019
I mentioned the requisition of an EGM to appoint two new directors at Superdry (SDRY) in a previous article. Here’s some more analysis: The requisition has been submitted by two founders – former CEO Julian Dunkerton and James Holder who together hold about 29% of the ordinary shares. They wish to appoint Julian and Peter Williams as non-executive directors – Mr Williams is a very experienced director of consumer products companies and is currently Chairman of Boohoo.com Plc although he is stepping ...
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FRC Revolution to Fix Audit and Accounting Problems

Post Date: March 12, 2019
A major announcement that will impact investors was made yesterday by the Government. You may not have noticed it in the midst of political turmoil, but it’s worth studying. The Kingman review of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) was published last December. It was a quite damning criticism of many aspects of the current regulatory regime that had resulted in so many audit failures and poor-quality financial reporting. See my previous blog post on this subject here: https://roliscon.blog/2018/12/18/all-change-in-the-audit-world/ There are few experienced investors ...
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