Evil Diaries

The Evil Diaries: Lonmin and Churchill Mining

The Evil Diaries: Lonmin and Churchill Mining

0 mins. to read

An unusual opportunity has arisen at Lonmin (LMI). It is raising circa £300m at 1p per share. The issue is underwritten. Curiously the nil paid (LMIN) stand at 0.03p offer, which, added to the 1p subscription price, gives an all in cost of 1.03p. This contrasts to the 1.25p or so at which the ordinary…

The Evil Diaries: “Little fish are sweet”

The Evil Diaries: “Little fish are sweet”

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Little fish are sweet (Chapter 94): It has always been hard to take African Potash (AFPO) seriously since its website is in material aspects identical to that of some other fertiliser business. This in turn raises the clear inference that AFPO’s management does not take originality seriously. However, this morning it transpires that they have…

The Evil Diaries: BCB and HSS

The Evil Diaries: BCB and HSS

2 mins. to read

Little fish are sweet: I have been sat in BCB (BCB) for years. It’s Lord (Michael) Ashcroft’s Belizean toy bank. It reported last week, showing net assets of £38m as against a capitalisation at 7p of £7m. Further, annualising the first quarter’s results gives a profit expectation of £4.8m net of tax. Or put another…

The Evil Diaries: Plus 500 and HBOS

The Evil Diaries: Plus 500 and HBOS

1 mins. to read

Not entirely surprisingly, the Plus 500 (PLUS) bid from Playtech has broken down since the FCA was not prepared to give PLUS clearance. Good old FCA (I never thought I’d write that). But the share price is barely changed down at 355p. Take PLUS’s declaration this morning that “Regulatory compliance capability has been strengthened.” One…

The Evil Diaries: RIP Jim Slater

The Evil Diaries: RIP Jim Slater

1 mins. to read

Jim Slater has died, aged 86. I revelled in his friendship. A few years ago, the BBC featured a rather lurid documentary claiming that a number of financiers regularly gathered at The Clermont Club in a private dining room to organise the finances of British industry and commerce to suit themselves. This was nonsense as…

The Evil Diaries: Pantheon and Orosur

The Evil Diaries: Pantheon and Orosur

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As ever, trying to judge what is going on inside a company from the utterances of John Walmsley is completely impossible. But I am not selling Pantheon (PANR). Now 90p. Anyway he and Ignacio Salazar of Orosur (OMI) were round here yesterday afternoon – John is also of course chairman of OMI. My difficulty is…

The Evil Diaries: Dialight, Madagascar Oil and HSS Hire

The Evil Diaries: Dialight, Madagascar Oil and HSS Hire

1 mins. to read

My wife and I lived in central Africa for four years and thus encountered the statistic that not hundreds but many thousands of lives of young African children are lost each year due to snake bites. This does not surprise since the fact is that the puff adder and the Gaboon viper, to name but…

The Evil Diaries: Just Eat and Blinkx

The Evil Diaries: Just Eat and Blinkx

1 mins. to read

The chairman draws my attention to the SunTimes article on Just Eat (JE.). This now stands at 425p or so and is on a prospective PE of 80 for 2015. Tnav is nothing about which to write home. So it is all in the earnings story. Forget that one of its big backers, Index Ventures,…

The Evil Diaries: Sheer Silliness and Fever-tree

The Evil Diaries: Sheer Silliness and Fever-tree

2 mins. to read

I am indebted to Saturday’s DTel for any facts that here follow. However, a James Alan Craig of Dunragit, Scotland pretended to be Muddy Waters Research through coming up with @Mudd1Waters. This is a really subtle deception device whose only fault is that it supposes that there are some cretins to hand to be taken…

The Evil Diaries: “A druggy writes”

The Evil Diaries: “A druggy writes”

2 mins. to read

I had slightly decided not to say anything about Plethora (PLE) and the bid since the chairman owns 29% of PLE and is the controlling luminary at Regent Pacific, whose number on the HKSE is 575. This modesty was partly occasioned by my ignorance but principally because the chairman also controls this site. However, I…