Member Info for AlmaCogan

Merging a Dubai private company with a listed Scottish plc provides more obstacles than an Iron Man competition. It's a lawyers breakfast which would take forever.

There is no merger or debt swap or joint venture. Both Wood and Sidara have said it's an all share cash offer. It's public knowledge in the RNS statements of both parties.

Fictional alternative arrangements are simply not going to happen

"Saudi Vision 2030"

It's all about NEOM, as I said yesterday.......

I know that I am one of the negative posters here, but I also know that most of what I say is reported to LSE and deleted by “you all know who you are”. That speaks to a cohort of posters who simply cannot tolerate a difference of opinion. I am sorry for you; you need confirmation bias at all costs.

I was one of the early investors here, and I made a few quid trading it, but eventually I became convinced that GS was a slippery character, and his previous record of UK ventures are a bit odd. GS has very little skin in this game.

None of the original purposes of this company have come to fruition and GS scrambles around looking for distressed insurance companies to acquire in pursuit of a mythical 2 Bn in AUM. The problem with insurance companies is that they have matching liabilities and looking at AUM is a false target. His big name in life settlements, Danny Swick, walked off.

When someone refuses to tell you what’s going on you ought to suspect their motive. When auditors walk away, you ought to wonder why. When the CEO relocates to Bermuda, you think what was wrong with California?

Even the acclaimed BOAGF has relocated to Ireland from Cayman without explanation and seems to be performing below the PR puff if you look at the SEC submissions. It’s not clear if SLIM in Chester is involved anymore. I did ask them and got no reply, which disturbed me

I think that GS and a few of the larger investors would like to see Alpha delist and go private to flog it off. They’ve had the retail punters’ money, spent it, and they don’t want you anymore. So, for me that’s not an investment opportunity.

I am sure this post will be deleted and that speaks to them not me.

Enjoy your day.

It’s all about NEOM.

There is a trillion dollar project emerging in NW Saudi Arabia, where MBS is going to spend $500 billion of oil production revenue to transform Saudi into a land that no longer needs oil for sustainability. He knows oil will eventually deplete or be overtaken by the climate change agenda, and he has the vision to navigate an otherwise existential threat to the Kingdom.

This project needs serious mega contractors, and whilst Sidara is big, it doesn’t have the scale and range to seize the really big opportunities in NEOM. Sidara lives in Dubai, a nice Sunni neighbour and Wood lives in Sunny Aberdeen. Together as Sidara Wood, that creates the necessary scale of talent and human resources overnight, which otherwise Sidara would spend a decade assembling, and they are in the right place at the right time.

For Wood, for its people, and for Sidara it’s a marriage made in Heaven.

That is why Sidara is making a fifth attempt to acquire Wood, and it’s now or never. They won’t walk away this time, and Wood directors know which side their toast is buttered, or if they don’t, they will be toast too, and very quickly.

Sidara Wood, bookmark it.

"It tells us Gilmartin has a very strong personal motivation to not accept a low ball offer from Sidara."

It's not his decision to accept, it's for the Board, and they can only recommend or not. The decision rests with major shareholders.

These lawyers at ICSID are on $3,000 a day. I repeat $3,000 a day!

We are wondering why it's taking so long.

They aren't wondering, they are racketeering, procrastinating, and profiting every day. Legal fraud IMO.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth , just take the gift and ride off into the distance.

How do you merge a private company based in Dubai with a listed UK company registered in Scotland ?

Answer : create a lawyers' breakfast costing £50 million and wait 6 months for a result, which ends up in court.

Should such a thing happen you will then have shares without a market to sell into.

It's nothing to do with due diligence , it's about getting irrevocable commitments from institutions to agree a price and vote for it at an EGM. That way it's a walkover, even if Ken disagrees.

Four and two sevenths of a penny . They don't do decimals in Aberdeen

Why is anyone responding to Godders?

"Given you seem to think there is another party involved or who would like to be involved in the purchase of Wood Group, please enlighten us all and let us know the name of the interested party."

It's me and I am more than willing to offer £250,000

Donald Rumsfeld knew what he was talking about when he said:

There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.

What went on in the Wood "plc" boardroom as they called it, today is known by someone, but that's a known unknown for most of us. Know what I mean?

it won't be unknown for very long.

"When is FID expected"

By mid year 2025 according to the operator.

It was a Billy Connolly joke. Remember him?

Icecool

You are too young to remember it.

The John Wood Group grew and prospered under a family ownership which respected the value of money and never a penny was wasted and never a penny was lost on a contract.

Aberdeen was always known to be to the home of tight pockets. Never a person to be seen on Union Street on a RNLI flag day. Sir Ian was the archetypal scrooge. I often sat across the aisle from him on BA 1301 on a 0700 Monday morning run to Heathrow. He had his business notes in his old school leather satchel, and if he crossed his legs, one could see holes in the leather soles of his shoes. He drove a white Jaguar XK8 with rusty sills which he didn’t bother fixing. He was famous for being mean with his cash, and that’s how he grew WG into an industry giant.

We now have a situation where his personal wealth is 5x the MCap of the company he floated and retired from!

You can’t help thinking he’s having a dram at home in RDS tonight and thinking: “How did you bar stewards do this to my life’s work?”

In auction now

A haircut, shave and a tie for Ken might help investor confidence?