Mitie (LON:MTO) continues its highwire act even though the wire has been seriously lowered. This business has gone wrong and it is unlikely that Phil Bentley can turn it round. It is amazing that the banks have let the dividend be paid at all. Half time net assets are disclosed as £223m but intangibles remain…
My best ever investment has been Golden Prospect perhaps twenty years ago where I was urged on by my pal, Richard Lockwood, a director and co-founder of the company. Family Cawkwell made £3.5m. Which result struck me as unlikely to be beaten. However, it nearly was yesterday when the 550,000 shares in Avesco (LON:AVS) that…
It’s been a giddy few days trading currencies and I decided to cash in on my JPY short. It’s quite a profit. By standards understood to me JPY is still a raving short. But timing is everything so the chairman’s advice was taken. However, not long after that he got me to go long Mexican…
GCM (LON:GCM) has announced a Memorandum of Understanding with some Chinese concern to accelerate its Bangladeshi coal opportunity. This is fine and the shares are up from 13p to 50p+. However a Memorandum is not quite the same as Production. Further, on 29th May 2016 GCM borrowed £3m convertible at 11p per share. Given that…
Every time the doorbell goes I fear that it is a courier-sped P45 from the chairman. For I it was who urged him to put £100,000 (I do not know whether he took this advice – after all, he may be wise) on Clinton at around 4/9. Worse, I asked three people whom I respect…
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: I won £80,000 on Almandin last Tuesday in the Melbourne Cup but had lost £20,000 of that by COB Friday. However, by around 4.20 p.m. on Saturday I had lost a further £20,000. Not good. And then I won £60,000 in no less than three major fluke football…
I had a very interesting conversation with David Cowen, FD of Molins (LON:MLIN), yesterday. For as readers may recall I have begun seriously to doubt the widespread reports that company after company is insolvent because of deficits in their pension funds. I am certainly not an actuary but in essence computation of a surplus or…
Today’s press carries the item that a group of some 125 Tesco (LON:TSCO) shareholders are claiming £100m+ damages as a result of having invested in Tesco in the light of buoyant figures caused by fraudulent accounting. I dare say that some might claim on the basis that they would have sold but for the figures…
I was surprised by the Uber judgement. After all, the taxi drivers put up their own capital and work their own hours. So I asked a longstanding tax expert whom I know. His reply is instructive: “The UBER judgment is nonsense unless, which is not improbable, our trendy and light-on-law modern day judiciary decide to…
Perhaps ten years ago I first considered the Far Eastern plantations covering palm oil – MP Evans (LON:MPE) in Malaysia and REA (LON:RE.) in Indonesia. The latter was run by a Richard Robinow who struck me as extremely civilised when lunching at Drayton Gardens around that time. His family are what used to be known…
