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She works for the Telegraph now. Not putting any blame on her personally, she was just doing her job i guess and i dont know all the circumstances. Maybe the article was changed by the London Evening Standard without her knowledge.
Wether we get a single penny back from Alli or not..the least we can get is the truth.
I left her some messages on her twitter account. Ill let you know if i get a reply but not expecting much.
Not sure we can expect any help from Laura Onita. The article she wrote has already been changed to hide the bits where Alli was saying how confident he was that Koovs were going to succeed and be in the black by 2022/3.
Its now been replaced to show him as bejng against anti semitism and a champion of gay rights.
Our hero..a man of the people.
The cover up begins!
Never even heard of prepack administration before but i now see debenhams did it back in April. This also from the Evening Standards Laura Onita...
Debenhams shareholders’ have been wiped out in the process, including Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct, its largest shareholder with a 29.9% stake. Ashley has spent around £150 million building his holding in the retailer since 2014.
If they can use it to rob someone like Mike Ashley, then it wont be easy for us to fight it but maybe Alli in his haste to get it done just before the election in the hope it will go unnoticed by the media, might have made mistakes that we can capitalise on.
Dr777 not yet but i intend to as soon as poss. Been very busy today.
Decided to try to understand the pre pack administration thing and was looking here...
https://www.realbusinessrescue.co.uk/pre-pack-administration/process-and-procedure
But to be honest that sort of thing is above my head, im just an ordinary joe who doesnt understand technicalities very well but hope and am confident that others here are more than capable of understanding it all and explaining it to us simpletons (maybe just me) in more basic terms.
Various automated replies are now coming in from my original emails to investigate this further, from various authorities. Not sure it will do anything but we can hope.
Should've known all along it'd be impossible to make any decent money from a labour peer!
Bloodshot: Have you contacted the journalist for her to put that question to him?
@Trebuchet Kid - Tweet - spread the word:
'@UKLabour peer Baroness @gailrebuck is a Koovs Director whose Chairman Lord Waheed Alli has taken the company into administration & bought it back on the same day, losing shareholders tens millions £Worth distancing from this scam'
The stand out quote is right at the end...
“If you take investors’ money, you have an obligation to deliver returns on them. We’re going to win the race that we’re in, our brand is going to win in India,” says Alli, confident Koovs will be in the black by 2022-23.
So what happened in a few short months for him to go from supremely confident, to this farce.
Wheres our returns?
Continues...
“I saw a gap in the Indian market,” the 54-year-old says, resting in an armchair at his offices near Covent Garden.
Twenty Koovs staff, mostly designers, mingle there with Silvergate Media, his most recent TV production company. The rest of Koovs’ 250 staff are based in Delhi and Mumbai.
Alli is banking on India’s young, digitally-savvy shoppers — 65% of the population is under 35 — who have more money to spend and are increasingly likely to order fashionable clothes online or on their smartphones.
But he has the hard task of convincing investors that his gamble on an emerging market will pay off.
Although analysts at Hardman & Co are bullish about its chances, risks such as a slower uptake of e-commerce or new entrants could hold the retailer back. It will probably have to raise more cash too. “If you take investors’ money, you have an obligation to deliver returns on them. We’re going to win the race that we’re in, our brand is going to win in India,” says Alli, confident Koovs will be in the black by 2022-23.
Meet Waheed Alli: The Labour peer suffering birth pangs of India’s answer to Asos
LAURA ONITA
Friday 5 July 2019 11:10
Click to follow
The Evening Standard
Media mogul Waheed Alli founded fashion website Koovs in 2012 ( )
Nearly three years ago media mogul Waheed Alli was on the brink of losing the millions he had put into his most recent venture, Koovs, the London-listed wannabe Asos of India.
In November 2016, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, with only four hours’ notice, took high-denomination banknotes out of circulation. The move was meant to drive money out of the shadows but, in the short term at least, it knocked the stuffing out of the economy and punctured the hyper-growth of online businesses like Koovs.
Alli, or Baron Alli of Norbury in the London borough of Croydon, to give him his full title, says: “It really hurt. A lot of people operating in our sector disappeared. We survived because of great management, because we knew what we were doing.”
The Labour peer’s know-how came from 12 years as the chairman of Asos, helping it grow from a fledgling start-up, with flat growth and losses, into the fearsome adversary it would become for the High Street, eventually stepping down in 2012.
He left “because I could tell Nick Robertson [Asos’s boss and co-founder] wanted to leave”. “If you’re the chair of a public company and the chief executive wants to leave, generally what happens, you have to find a new chief executive.
“Everybody blames you if it doesn’t work, and then whoever it is will likely want to get rid of you. Well, ‘that’s a fun three years’, I thought, and I didn’t want to do that. I said to Nick, ‘if you’re going to go, I’m going to go before you.’”
So that was that. Alli used some of the cash from his £30 million stake in Asos to build a replica of the online retailer but in India. Enter Koovs, which has finally started showing recovery signs after the demonetisation blow was followed by a tax hit from Modi’s government.
Koovs’ revenues fell 40% from £3.9 million to £2.1 million for the first half to September 30, but it narrowed its pre-tax losses by 10% to £6.4 million from £7.8 million.
Its trendy clothes, aimed at India’s emerging middle-class youth, have been selling better since, Koovs told the City in May.
It also recently raised £10.4 million from India’s largest retailer Future Group to start spending on marketing again after it had to tighten its belt in 2017.
Good news has been in short supply for a share that listed at 200p and now stands at a meagre 7p. It had to go cap in hand to investors asking for £35 million over a three-year period in 2015, just a year after Alli, who is chairman, listed the company on London’s junior AIM in 2014. He has ploughed roughly £20 million of his own cash in to date.
Despite the bumpy ride Koovs has all the ingredients Asos had to succeed long term, he thinks. “I saw a gap in the Indian market,” the 54-year-old says, resting in
Dont know if anyone else read his interview with Laura Onita.
Not blaming Laura, she would have been as unaware of what was to come as the rest of us but it gave me the confidence to hold onto my shares in the belief that this was a man who would make a success of Koovs, come what may.
Maybe he will still make a success of it in time but hes left his investors (many of whom, like myself where hoping this would help towards a good pension), with nothing.
I feel particularly sorry for those who have been holding and averaging down for years. Its a massive loss to them.
Lets hope at least something can be salvaged. The only way is to fight this labour member of the house of lords and try to shame him.
Shame on him!
Social media is where it’s at, we need to make sure he doesn’t make another penny from this company!
At last a balanced and reasoned comment,The BOD was being shafted by FLF,there was no other option.put the company into administration, FLF now powerless but still need Koovs to maintain their web presence.personally have long thought FLF was a house built on sand, it's the old story borrow money to repay earlier debt, a variation on a Ponzi scheme
@robbo13 I can see your point of view regarding why Lord Alli took the company private, the only flaw with your suggestion is that if shareholders were given new shares in a new company then surely FLFL would be entitled to them too?
My issues 18th November
Alongside its discussions with FLFL, the Company is actively considering all other financing alternatives available to it.
Clearly a lie.
10th December
A competitive sale process has been conducted over the past month in an effort to continue the business as a going concern, but no viable offers were received.
What they meant to say in November was, we are working on a pre pack, but disguising it as Shareholders have some hope..
I sent an email last night to the below, it may be worth more people sending one for someone to take notice or indeed you could look into the FCA for more info.
market.abuse@fca.org.uk
Is it possible that administrators were about to wind up Koovs, so panicking Alli into a rash impromptu decision without prior thought or consideration. It does seem that many rules were broken. Investords were not given a chance and fund raising could have saved the day for now. But i think there has been presure from banks and the administrators to get sorted and they have been ignoring the situation until their hand was forced by Strand Hanson resigning. This has probably been going into oblivion for months but they lacked fortitude and courage to do more in spite of warnings. As always shareholders are left in the dark until the very last. This is scandalous and should be investigated. Imo
Thanks for the info..I look forward to hearing any further developments.
Tom is back in the group. This from a large shareholder:
Clearly ALLI has bought this through a prepacked administration, which under AIM rules cannot happen
This is a listed PLC company and has shareholders.
Firstly Alli should have requested an EGM and also put out an RNS stating that the company could enter administration and that the company is up for sale. This didn't happen. This is a listed company and this HAS to happen in any case.
Furthermore, it had to be announced that the company is up for sale, to give an opportunity for a buyout. Furthermore an equity raising could have taken place, via a placing, they had headroom to raise circa £5m. This didn't happen
This is a "transaction at undervalue" to defraud investors and needs to be investigated. I am a substantial shareholder here and i will be writing to FRP for them to answer questions in relation to the sale of the company for an "undervalued sum". Furthermore i will be writing to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform for them to investigate
If this was a Private company, this transaction could have happened, but it wasn't, it is a PLC and a sale of this kind needs to be voted on, and shareholders needed to be informed
One of the duties of the appointed insolvency practitioner (IP) is to identify whether any transactions at undervalue have been carried out.
The IP may be able to go back two years or more from the date of insolvency in their search, and have the right to apply to the court for the transaction(s) to be reversed.
A transaction at undervalue occurs when a business asset is transferred or sold to a third party, either for no payment at all, or for a price that is considerably lower than its true value.
Clearly ALLI thinks he can get away with this, not this time...
Whitman Howard made a placing public to certain people on 4th December, but Koovs did not notify the market!!!
Good to hear from you putneylad. Im sure you and the rest in the twitter group along with other long term holders here wont just easily let this pass without a fight.
Not sure if talygarntom is still in your group but would love to hear his views, as he is obviously very knowledgeable and could be a big help.
Some very large shareholders are now on board, Chinner, contact us.
We are gathering evidence as we believe that there has been fraudulent activity, especially with the 'apparent' sale of the company.
As a long term investor, I have been defrauded of my investment. Many questions need answering.
Does anybody have any information regarding the House Broker trying to conduct a placing?
First of all, I'm so sorry if anybody bought on my research. I'm in total shock at what has happened here.
As many of you know, I liked the Indian story but hated the management.
The arrogance of Waheed Alli is astounding. We have been reporting him to the FCA for over 6 months & letting him & the NOMAD Strand Hanson CEO Simon Ragett know this too.
The FCA has a full dossier, but with Alli's huge legal team, there is nothing we can do on this front.
I turned up at the London office on 12th November & met Robert Pursell the CFO. I have photographic proof. He told me not to be so paranoid & that Kishore Biyani was committed to the deal, blaming the RBI. He blamed day traders for the drop, even though i said that the share price & price action never lie. This was obviously a lie as Waheed Alli had already set up the company SGIK 3 INVESTMENTS on 15th Oct (see pic in tweet). This has been planned for months.
Alli took the company into administration in the morning & bought it in the afternoon after it was apparently on sale for a month!
He always promised to return shareholder value & has now wiped out every single shareholder for his own gain.
Koovs paid Hardman & Co to come out with a misleading analysis with a share price value of 74P
For 6 years he has suckered in investors, then collapses the company over £6.5 million which he could of easily funded.
The only recourse we have is a formal complaint to the House of Lords Standards committee where he should lose his peerage as far as I am concerned. We are working on this.
The CFO Robert Pursell, the CEO Mary Turner, the PR firm Newgate Communications & all those who around Koovs need to be exposed too.
There is a lot of bad feeling & noise being generated against Koovs on Twitter. Hopefully, someone, somewhere will pick up on this.
Any advise will be appreciated, contact me via....
https://twitter.com/Trebuchet_Kid/status/1204473650352709637