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Spikey raised a good point earlier regarding whether Amit had ever made money for retail pis. My understanding is he has never been involved in a publicly listed company with traded shares.
Obviously Cloudtag is now private, but that is purely as a result of the original company being thrown off the Aim. With his financing background and this track record of unbroken brilliance and personal wealth of millions it begs the question why he went down the Aim listing route to raise a fraction of the amount he walked away with from the J&J deal in the 1990s. We know he made some tidy millions flipping an apartment in NYC to keep it working.
I read a brilliant post on LSE some years back, can’t remember the author, along the lines of the best ideas and best connected individuals wouldn’t go near an Aim listing as there are many routes to raising finance for winning ideas. The notion of cutting a bunch of Aim chancers (I include myself in that) into a virtually certain winner doesn’t really stack up.
Of course there are the odd winners with Aim companies that do make large returns but the majority seem to be lifestyle setups with paying CEO salaries the main objective.
True spikey, it was of course when I was a holder (sold due to the impending delist). Even when I held, Amit brought to mind what they used to say about Nixon (“Would you buy a used car off this man?”). Made sure I got on a free ride asap.
This is nothing like other Aim shares Trombone, I’ve got those T shirts and am also not on those boards. I’ve had plenty of civilised exchanges with Helx, who I’m sure can speak for himself. Again this is a discussion board with a filter button. I’ve posted on this board for seven years and will continue to do so as long as Amit keeps the plates spinning.
Realistically, what was the alternative to acknowledging he messed up with the promises at some point? It’s not like no one noticed!
Helx, you replied to me a couple of months back that he basically had a fortnight after I asked whether another dozen updates would make it even more nailed on than the count of 24 at that time.
Must be up to 30 now and you’re basically telling him you’re good with half a dozen more..
The only amount claimed to be in escrow was pertaining to the licensing deal as far as I remember. It was only fairly recently this was pinned down to $50m.
The most credible update in a long while. Of course it would have been full on party time in 2018/19 after those share sales and who would have time to do the boring paperwork?
If Prince Harry had a holding, I’m pretty sure some legal action would be happening. We have a justice system based on how deep your pockets are and how strong your motivation is and of course liable to variable outcomes as we see with some of the judgements (which are then often completely reversed on appeal).
I won my first CCJ against someone in the late 70s. I used to get them for relatively small amounts owed in the 80s when you could fill in a simple form through the small claims court and pay something like a fiver and get a judgement a few weeks later. Nowadays who would bother, it would likely cost hundreds with the typical broken Britain year plus wait.
“Is this the 5 minute argument or the full half hour?” Neither, 7 years and counting ..
There is an interesting item on the SFO website menu - ‘Our Cases’.
The ones I clicked on seemed to be ongoing after 5 or more years.
If the SFO is a crack team just waiting to jump on anything at a moments notice (and take on the FCAs casework out of the goodness of their hearts) and give a verdict in under three weeks it has miraculously escaped the malaise that has affected every other state controlled organisation over the past twenty years plus.
Talking of the FCA, the hopeless Andrew Bailey, now governor of Bank of England, who no sane person would rely on to tell the weather if he was looking out the window, was previously head there. Metaphorically and literally asleep at the wheel if you care to Google.
There are odds for every bet. Years since I put any money on a horse but a glance at todays racing typically has the favourites around 4 to 1 with the outsiders down at 50 to 1 but I’m sure racing odds go longer than that, 200 to 1? I can certainly recall 100 to 1. Basically all the latter are similar in being unlikely to pay out.
50-50 odds? It’s certainly binary (either ‘trolls’ O, shareholders 1 or vice versa).
Nah, he’s still trying to do it using ChatGPT to write the code..
Think it came from that source of all wisdom.. some random bloke posting on twitter
I caught the ‘interviews’ for the final five on the Apprentice last week, hilarious. I’d pay good money to see Amit trying to bluster his way out of a one to one with Lord Sugar.
..As I’ve posted before in reply to you, of course wrongdoing in any sphere that resulted in a conviction would potentially impact holding a FCA credential - but that doesn’t mean it is the job of the FCA to investigate or prosecute.
If you sleep better by believing that every single activity an individual undertakes within the separate legal entities they are connected to automatically comes under the regulatory and legislative regimes that variously attach to individual enterprises then my apologies for troubling you with my understanding.
Unless you can directly link SB corporate into the Cloudtag saga, the FCA registration for that entity is completely irrelevant to activity conducted in connection with Cloudtag. I gave a personal example of how a product I held with a wholly owned subsidiary of Nationwide BS was completely outside of FCA protection despite NBS being FCA regulated. Can’t post any link as it will be behind a paywall, but last Sunday’s Sunday Telegraph had an article about Newcastle BS members being totally abandoned by them and the FCA over an associated party who were introduced by them and put assets in trusts which later involved huge losses - the setting up of the trusts was not under FCA protection. There was a quote along the lines of the FCA having a very narrow focus on what was strictly within its remit - which is difficult to actually argue with. It would need legislation changes to put those activities within the FCA remit.
HL don’t own those shares as such, they’re the aggregated pi holdings. When all’s said and done they are execution only brokers, will hold the shares and carry out Corporate Actions (if given the information and money!) and that’s as far as it goes.