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Is that a recent number, Skindle? The FT (freely available) online tearsheets have the Markit category as "low" for Findel, but that FT data might be a little out-of-date. It would be interesting if it has increased recently from low to medium. I note that on the Euroclear data there was a noticeable increase in average shares on loan in January before dipping back slightly in February. The data for March should be out next week, but from a low of 0.4m shares (average) in October, it rose to 2.6m shares in Jan: Oct'15 0.4m shares on loan (average) Nov'15 0.3m Dec'15 0.6m Jan'16 2.6m Feb'16 2.5m

Voting rights apparently acquired recently by Sports Direct and Morgan Stanley total 16.5m (10.6m SD, 5.9m MS). However, it is possible MS already had a sub-3% holding before the announcement and therefore the total could be a bit lower than this 16.5m - if indeed the MS voting rights aren't actually a subset of the SD voting rights. Toscafund had 17.9m voting rights according to the General Meeting documentation. Schroders had 15.1m voting rights. However, in there last holdings notice, Schroders declared 17.3m shares vs the 15.1m voting rights (who knows - maybe Morgan Stanley could have held the voting rights for the "extra" shares?). So I think Schroders exiting is another credible possibility for the source of SD & MS voting rights. Somehow, I would feel much happier if it turns out to have been Schroders exiting (or a combination of Toscafund and Schroders reducing, or indeed other players exiting) than if it turns out to have been Toscafund exiting. This is because I see Toscafund as the "activist" here - and I would see their exit as an indication that they don't really believe SD will come in with a good offer for the whole company.

I agree. In fact RMax (RhythmXchange) hit an "all-time" high (albeit only 2 months' data so far) on 30th March for both mobile and online uniques with in particular over 5m (daily) mobile (web) uniques for the first time. This was particularly impressive since it was a week-day and the mobile stats tend to be higher at weekends. At least from the Quantcast stats, RMax is by far the dominant piece on mobile. It recorded 5.1m mobile uniques on 30th March against a total of only 0.6m for R1 Premium and AdKarma combined. Mobile web accounts for about 50% of RMax uniques at weekends and about 40% during the week. AllMedia stats so far are very disappointing, compared to the 25m unique users per month stated in the press release. More than 2/3 of the way through the first month of data they are showing fewer than 7m unique users (people) globally and fewer than 3m US so far. They don't yet have a "Celebified" subsegment and I wonder if the AllMedia Quantcast data is incomplete in other ways as well.

Does anyone know how the reporting requirements work for swaps and CFDs in this instance? MS has reported acquiring 6m voting rights through its swap. SD has reported acquiring 11m voting rights through its cfd. If MS used its long position to enter into the CFD with SD (i.e. MS short / SD long) and that CFD involved SD getting the voting rights, would MS be required to issue a further holdings notice declaring the reduction in its voting rights?

Well the Morgan Stanley voting right numbers correspond to 2 of the trades done at 170.7388p on Thursday. But that still leaves approx. 3.6m shares at that price plus all 9.505m shares done in the "round number" group of trades. I thought perhaps someone such as MS had bought shares and then used them to enter into the CFD with Sports Direct. But the fact MS is declaring voting rights suggests that this is in addition to SD's holding doesn't it? i.e. we're now looking for who has given up voting rights for both SD's 11m and MS's 6m. I note that at the time of the General Meeting, Toscafund held about 18m shares. Surely they haven't baled out?

at 189p.

Those 11m additional voting rights for Sports Direct must have come from someone.

Up again in February according to Morningstar. On 3rd Mar Morningstar were reporting 11.6m shares (at end-Jan) for R&M (now 11.9m at end-Feb), so possibly a net increase of 0.3m rather than the 0.95m currently shown on Morningstar, but an increase whichever way you look at it.

I note my purchase doesn't seem to appear on the trades list (either advfn or London South East). According to the contract note it went through on ICAP.

...at 198p. Below the average purchase price of my current holding and I think with plenty of upside potential. Whether or not Sports Direct launch a full bid, I think the potential for a mutually attractive product/distribution agreement between Sports Direct and Findel is there. Clearly a chance of the market deciding MA just wants to wreck Findel's business out of revenge for being snubbed/tricked over the director position - with a consequent marking down of the Findel share price - but I'm betting that calmer heads will prevail on both sides and they'll find a win-win.

Skindle - they've acquired voting rights with the CFD so those must have come from someone with shares mustn't they? My interpretation is that Sports Direct entered into a CFD with a third party (Company "X") who owned shares. Given the Thursday trades (which looked like 2 groups of trades each for about 9.505m shares and each in the low 170's for price) I wonder if X bought the shares from existing shareholders (Toscafund and/or Schroders would still be my guess) before entering into the CFD with Sports Direct. So the trades reported were X buying and an existing shareholder(s) selling. Is it possible the seller(s) did not know that ultimately their shares were going to be used to increase Sports Direct's position? e.g. Toscafund sold to X, thinking that X wanted to build its own position in Findel but actually company X was only buying the shares in order to support the CFD with Sports Direct. So the seller sold to X at the "market" price in the 170's rather than holding out for the premium they might have expected to obtain had they known Sports Direct was going to be the ultimate beneficiary? If so, then some clever positioning by either X or Sports Direct, depending on whether the CFD strike price was in the 170's or something rather higher than that. My speculation was wide of the mark on Thursday, so treat these thoughts with caution! I hope we get to see some more holdings notices today which might shed some more light on what happened.

Well I did say "not impossible" but clearly I did not think that was the likely scenario. It certainly raises a few questions.

It looks like there was some fat finger trouble with the trade reporting which means the final tally was "only" 19.3m shares traded. The main action seems to have consisted of 9.505m shares traded in the late morning/early afternoon at an average of 171.1p and 9.505m shares traded in the late afternoon at about 170.7p. The obvious conclusion is that these were two sides of the same transaction - although it seems a bit odd that the lower priced transactions were the later ones - wouldn't you expect the sell before the buy? 9.505m is fewer than Sports Direct's last declared holding (14.9m), but appears to be more than would take Toscafund over the 30% mandatory offer threshold if that company had bought all 9.505m shares (based on its last declared position). I think Schroders could have bought them all and stayed under 30% of the voting rights, although it would have gone over 30% of the shares owned (again according to the last declaration). The other interesting feature of Thursday's trading is the persistent 5000 share buys which seemed to have started in earnest about the end of the first block of big trades (the "buy" side?) and continued chasing the share price higher. There was also the spike in the closing auction with another nearly 30k shares going at the high price of the day. So the 5000-share trades, the closing auction and the price rise from the lows make me think this was something more than just Sports Direct unloading back to Schroders and/or Toscafund. In fact they would be consistent with someone deciding that the big deal was done and now they were going to hoover up whatever else they could from the open market - but I can't really see why they would chase the price so high on such a relatively small volume in this scenario (the price action vs volume feels more like someone nervously reducing a short position). Also that theory doesn't explain why Sports Direct didn't unload the full 14.9m (assuming they still had 14.9m before Thursday) - i.e. if there was a willing buyer out there on the open market, and in particular if that willing buyer was somehow linked to the bigger transactions, then wouldn't they just have negotiated some more from Sports Direct at a slightly higher price rather than apparently buying on the open market at ever-increasing prices? Or was Sports Direct deliberately keeping some back so that if there was some corporate action following its sale, it would still see a benefit? I think it unlikely that the buyer was Sports Direct given the price of the transactions. Although it's not impossible I suppose. I could just about see Toscafund and Schroders agreeing to the 9.5m sale if they thought SD would follow up with a bid for the remainder at a significant premium. I guess it will all become clearer on Tuesday or Wednesday when we see the holdings notices and/or any indication of corporate action.

Someone is keen. Looks promising.

Yes, around 9.5m shares going through at 170p-175p according to the trades listing, and 9.4m of them timed on the trades list as 12:45pm or earlier. The string of 5000 AT buys which appeared to take the price up (before the bigger trades were reported) started just afterwards at about 12:55pm. Something happening then. It might be nice to think Sports Direct was the buyer, prior to launching a bid, but given the price I agree it's more likely to be SD as the seller baling out. Have to wait for the TR-1 (s) to be sure. Then what's next? Is someone else interested?

Well that's a very nice intraday reversal on the back of (what looks like) a determined bit of buying...

I presume that investors and traders may be paying some attention to the following rather alarming statement: "Since then, we have had further discussions with both the FCA and the product underwriter to establish the appropriate basis for redress, which have led us to reach our present view that the redress provision should be increased from £2m to £10m under our latest assumptions. " The rest of the trading update doesn't read too badly in my opinion, if perhaps a bit too much flavour of "jam tomorrow" and more exceptionals than I would like. Skindle's assessment of "over £30m of pre-tax profit" from the 2 divisions on an adjusted operating basis (i.e. "from continuing operations before exceptional items") was about right and is something for the bulls to cling to perhaps.

Excellent interim statement as far as I can see. Good news on margin, ROCE, eps, dividend and debt. Disposal of Barking Riverside looks reasonable. Comments on London look positive. Outlook is good.

A new segment added today to the Quantcast split, with as yet no subsegments and virtually no data. Following on from the posts on Giant Realm, what chance this turns out to be a replacement for the existing "RhythmOne Premium" segment without the Giant Realm, MomIQ etc subsegments?