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Lsoc85, just seen Barclays purchased and swap to Long hold. I don't understand all the RNS haha. so many now.
Sellers are taking their profits today but make no mistake, this is Showdown at the OK Corral, it's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It's the cemetery scene next to the 'unknown' grave.
It's AYAYAAYAYYYYYY!!!!!
Look at the swell of RNSs. They're all lined up but nobody wants to make the first move.
But, by Christ, the longer they leave it, the higher the initial bid becomes, the higher the price of gold bullion in the unknown grave.
True value ALWAYS prevails; this is a cinematic masterpiece for holders and buyers still to come.
AYAYAAYAYYYYYY!!!!!
Keepsim,
abrdn plc - Standard Life is part of the Phoenix Group, the largest long-term savings and retirement business in the UK. They have just purchased 1.34% today it's all in the RNS
Morgan & Stanley just sold/purchased, American Bank etc. Have a look as I don't fully understand it, that's all been traded today.
Keepsim, I've read they need to have their bids in by 28th September.
Thought it will shoot up this week but.
When is the outcome of takeover negotiations expected?
TrogenHorse. Looks like Coast are interested aswell, so that's 3. Let the bidding war commence.
So is Coast interested too?
AutomationGuru.
Takeover target Blue Prism denies conflict of interest for director
Ken Lever had been listed as an advisor to one of Blue Prism's biggest shareholders, activist invetsor Coast Capital
By
Laura Onita
5 September 2021 • 7:00pm
Blue Prism
A director of the tech takeover target Blue Prism has surrendered his role as an adviser to one of its biggest shareholders amid concern in the City over potential conflict of interest.
Ken Lever, a non-executive at Blue Prism, was removed from the website of Coast Capital last Wednesday.
The action came after market speculation forced it to confirm on Tuesday that it was discussing potential rival bids from the US buyout firms TPG Capital and Vista Equity Partners.
Within hours, Coast, an activist investor with a stake in Blue Prism of just under 3pc, spoke out to warn that even if an offer of double the undisturbed share price were made it would undervalue the company.
A Blue Prism spokesman denied his dual roles at the company and one its biggest shareholders represented a potential conflict of interest. He did not know about Coast’s interest, it was claimed.
The spokesman said: “Ken Lever was unaware of Coast Capital’s interest in Blue Prism prior to the formal announcement - and at no time did he discuss any existing or potential investment in the company in his unpaid, ad-hoc advisory role at Coast.
“Ken requested that he be formally removed from Coast’s list of advisers, which was agreed and swiftly implemented.”
But a City source following the potential takeover of Blue Prism said the relationship had fuelled concerns of a “gerrymandered” buyout.
The Warrington-headquartered company, whose clients include the NHS, Coca-Cola and Npower, is the latest British target for US private equity firms.
Although no bid value was disclosed, the stock market valuation of the Aim-quoted company jumped by a third last week to almost £1.1bn.
The business has pioneered “robotic process automation”, where software replaces workers to perform administrative tasks. It was founded by David Moss and Alastair Bathgate, both of whom remain major shareholders.
Coast did not respond to a request for comment.
Lord Alan Sugar has 22 directorships - so in my opinion being a director in several different companies is not unusual and of itself it does not indicate a conflict of interest.
https://companycheck.co.uk/director/901805262/LORD-ALAN-MICHAEL-SUGAR/summary
Funny they talk about a board member with ties to Coast but forget to talk about the board advisor with ties to TPG:
Sohaib Abbasi
Chair of Blue Prism Global Strategic Technology Advisory Panel
Sohaib is a global business executive and computer scientist. He served as Chairman and CEO of Informatica between 2004 – 2015 and held executive roles at Oracle. He currently serves on the boards of private companies Peakon and StreamSets and is a Senior Advisor at TPG (Texas Pacific Group) and Balderton Capital UK. His prior public company experience includes serving on the board of Red Hat prior to its acquisition by IBM.
Needs a subscription. Would you mind copy/pasting some of the key points? I'm interested.
I think the issue with the UK is the government policies around pumping the housing market since you canny lose with bricks and mortar, whilst in the US they are far more focused on pumping everything.
I'd say a lot is down to home bias.
In US you have 350 mill all speaking same language and investing is much more common place, and most of that investing will be in US stocks.
In UK the pop is a fifth so that's already a disadvantage, plus as Europe is split by language it's harder to get good info about stocks outside your own nation (how many here do we reckon own any German or Italian stocks for eg?) Plus we don't really invest in this country except in pensions and pension funds want stable returns fro dividend. However that stops company growing as lots of profit is going straight out of the business. Also penalises growth companies as there is much less demand for their shares.
That's my 2 pence, will be interesting to see, esp with new free trading sites, if things change here. Certainly now every employee has to get a pension from their worker will mean more money should flow into stocks, but will it still just be the big div ones?
I agree, I think it will be good to get an offer to validate the unrecognised value but I'm hoping they don't accept (unless of course it's a significant premium!). Granted it's only a film(!) but I recall The Social Network including a scene where offers are made to Zuckerberg which must have seemed eye watering at the time but on reflection would have been a steal. Not saying we have a Facebook on our hands here but it makes the point.
I do wonder how Facebook, Amazon or Google would have got on if they started life on the LSE. It seems like these companies are only taken seriously once they become behemoths. It will be a shame for the UK to have another good company change hands with US buyers whilst our financial media whose age 40+ journalists don’t quite understand the tech they wrote about…
Perhaps it just took a while to get noticed. Many thanks for responding. Will be interesting to see where the bids start (assuming any are made of course!). For someone like Microsoft a decent premium on current price would still be fairly small beer.
Sorry don't know exactly when, I saw it about this time last night though (well some time between 2200 and 0100 anyway) so was up yesterday but don't know when.
Does anyone know when the FT article was released? It says 3am on 3rd but I didn't spot it until today. Bit of a contrast to the previous FT article on the potential takeover which was much more BP negative.
It’s going to get really interesting when Microsoft make their move!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/99b51687-a19e-43e6-bf84-5ee729e54e03
Blue Prism brings in Quattrone as brokers prepare for a bidding war
Sector rivals and industry players will be keen on the UK software pioneer, says analyst who foresaw buyout
UiPath was Romanian but set up HQ in NY. Guess they need to take themselves out of Warrington
word on the street is they have about 3% stake.
I don't see any RNS indicating they hold a significant stake. Coast just love to make noise tbh, spent years attacking Firstgroup and they owned a 15% stake and hardly did anything beyond getting the CEO to resign. If they really want to derail a takeover they should build a bigger stake!