I reckon my family owns circa 2m Polo (POL) which cost about £200,000. So I yesterday grasped the opportunity to meet Michael Tang, the Chairman & CEO at The Grosvenor Hotel. I told him that he is either a crook or an idiot. For some reason he did not warm to this categorisation.
However, I asked him how many shareholders there are in Polo. He did not know – this is quite ridiculous. I also asked him why he kept the Johannesburg office open and he invited me to ask Steve Dattels, whom I know and from whom Tang bought de facto control three years ago. This made and makes me angry.
There are real problems here. I would like to go into this company and sort it out. But a BVI company (i.e. Polo) cannot be boarded with less than 30% of the votes in one’s pocket. This enrages me.
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Beximco Pharma (BXP) in Dhaka is 80 Taka this morning or 68p. Meanwhile the price is creeping up in London – now 27p. I still think we’ll get a buy in of one sort or another.
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Concha (CHA) slid off 1p yesterday. And there is no announcement as to any plans for this benighted shell. It is still a cracking short above 2.5p.
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Watchstone (WTG), formerly Quindell, will pay out a 90p dividend on 17th/18th December. The residue is surely worth more than 8p a share. I paid 98p.
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Marine Le Pen has done well since she gives a voice to her fellow citizens who can all too readily see the consequences of rising Muslim numbers in France. The bien pensants refuse to do anything. All this will end very badly.
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On a mildly lighter note, I am handed the following snippet which has clearly done the rounds before. But I include it because my father encountered Ratu Mara during World War Two since my father had been seconded to assist the colonel of the Fijian Regiment. (This regiment was much given to drink and chucking live ammunition on the camp fire. I think you get the picture.) However, they met again a year or two later when Ratu Mara came to Wadham College Oxford and was, according to my father, tall and a very good cricketer. My father thinks this latter quality virtually guarantees sainthood. Anyway:
Sir,
The Times diary tells of Fijian King Ratu Mara’s claim to Scottish ancestry by ‘absorption’, as his great-great-grandfather had eaten a Scottish missionary. Mara played on his cannibalistic ancestry on other occasions. When he was sent to study in Britain, the only ships sailing to Southampton from New Zealand were of the South African ‘Union Castle’ line. These were the days of apartheid and the ships were segregated, first class being all white. After some diplomatic intervention Mara was designated an ‘honorary white’ for the purposes of the voyage. On going to dine he found that all but one of the tables in the first-class dining room had been crammed into one end of the room, while he sat in splendid isolation at the remaining table at the other end. On being presented with the menu by the head waiter, he waved it away saying loudly: ”Just bring me the passenger list.”