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So this afternoon, after market hours, Link reveal that last week they also dribbled out some shares, reducing the ex Woodford holding from 19.99% ro 18.33%.
Not terribly encouraging for current holders as it appears they will probably dripfeed these into any bid that appears, after all, it is not their money to lose is it, they are just managing the Woodford positions back into cash to be returned to his hapless investors ?
I guess they were active again today as 3.25mill traded, according to the FT website.

AJ Bell have their first ever finals as a quoted company out in a month, it will be very interesting to see if they are continuing to pick up market share as their last update showed they were.
My guess it is coming from HL in the main, they are a lot cheaper than HL.
I fancy HL's glory days are over, killed by costs & Woodford

Sorry 142.9p / share !

fairdealer
Your Pitcher/Piano point was exactly what I was thinking of when I said "in typical Findler fashion", given how he has strained to justify the dividend each year it is perhaps not unreasonable to presume that all assets are marked up to their best possible levels that the bank lenders would accept ?
After all the lower the LTV is the cheaper the loan cost presumably so I bet we don't have any concealed asets in the back pocket for a rainy day (from the Gordon Brown when Chancellor theory of accounting, leave nothing for a rainy day), but I suspect we all guessed that anyway.
I would prefer cash to a grubby run down old boozer or two, (or 137) anyday, even at a discount. With a book value of 1429/share or tangible book value of 94.4p (from FT as of last accounts) we have a bit of fat to cut considering we are a brewer more than a pubco.

This mornings announcement re sale of smaller wet led pubs should be good for the shares, but in typical Findler fashion our CEO emphasises the 0.2% improvement it makes to our ratios but glosses over the loss to book value.
Hopefully some of our assets are priced at a value that they could be sold above book cost ???
Not being a Jeremiah, just thinking out loud.

A good spot, the torygraph is not the paper it used to be.
Question for Mercia, of course, is where are the buyers going to come from ?
It also raises very legitimate questions re why the Mercia board were so cosy with the Woodford clique ?
They even shared the same Chair as WPCT in Searle, when Woodford and his old colleague Barnett were holding over 50% of the equity. To my mind that is clearly far from best practice, even for an AIM stock.....

metis
Just to confirm, there is an article in todays Daily Telegraph about WEIF and its major stakes in various companies, shows 20% of MERC still held in WEIF.
Add in Invesco's (Barnett) lump which is about the same now as WEIF and that is a lot of stock still to shift. Hard to be bullish with an overhang like that, IMV.

Dance ?
They bought in a lot higher and I'm glad I am not swallowing their loss !
Is that a Waltz or the Twist ?
Certainly not Ibiza in the summer is it ?

Well according to the RNS that was a third of Barnett's holding, so he has still got almost 20% of MERC left to sell, not to mention Link who are winding down Woodfords holding which from memory was about 20% left to sell so let's see if the sellers will be able to get lucky again. Simon T has been bullish on this one since they were about 60p, at least he is consistent !
Market cap about £73mill so the 40% overhang left to shift is just short of £30mill.
The Investors Chronicle buyers will have to dig deep into their pockets to mop that lot up !

They are having a strong day today, only down 0.1 of a penny.
A really strong day for them is when the price is unchanged !

I understand how you feel but the other side of the coin is that if you invest, & the shares are issued just before the election, which they surely will do under the circumstances, you have your 30% & tax free divis as Steptoe would have great difficulty in retrospectively removing what you paid for as per prospectus. Worth noting too that at their AGM a few months back they said how much revenue of the companies they invest in comes from overseas, my memory was it was about 1 third each between UK, EU & rest of world (mainly US). It surprised me but that was pretty much what they stated.
So well diversified for a VCT.My major worry is that they seem to have a habit of going in for AIM IPO's/placings & see the stock collapse in the aftermarket (velocys, i-nexus & loop up) are 3 especially illuminating examples of that. Are they losing their touch since Doug Lawson left ?

I have to admit to paying higher than this price early on in the demerger but after all the bullish comments the SP does not seem to want to go up right now, does it ?

Well, this tub of lard is now down to levels they last plumbed 4 years ago.
So where are these buyers, or was it just a mate that a director met in his local one evening ?
The BoD have some serious questions to answer as to why they find themselves in this position, I haven't seen any bullish posts recently, unlike those preposterous ones which were looking for bids at £29 or more on this board a few months ago. Reading through them now is better than a good comedy show.

Qd
It is perfectly possible that there are things going on that need only be covered by the Chairmans statement in the accounts, such as systems not integrating properly as you suggest, perhaps a legal but somewhat aggressive form of accounting for revenues has been used which is now coming back to bite them, any number of items like that, but the fact remains that unsolicited bids had been suggested yet none came through to fruition, so that does rather raise the question doesn't it ?

By the look of things they do seem to be picking up custers, 17% more according to the year end trading update.
This seems a good long term bet to me.

Taverham
You have to be correct in saying that they want to keep their jobs, irrespective of the cost to shareholders, as I have often posted "turkeys don't vote for Christmas".
I hope you are also correct that someone actually wants to make a bid, but that part is, I fear,not very promising. I find it hard to believe that in under a year we have gone from £30 to £6 & not a bid has been made, despite the invitation too. My thoughts still are that there is a very real possibility that there is something wrong which we are unaware of.

So according to my reading of the RNS Barnett is now selling, this price cut happened by Invesco selling just about 0.5 of one per cent, they still hold about 29%.
We know Link hold about 20% which was from the other half from the Barnett/Woodford temple of investment expertise, so rather a lot to place.
Will all buyers please form an orderly queue?
I'd be intrigued to know what reason the BOD can give as to the concentration of their equity into these hands, it took them long enough to stop sharing the same Chair as Woodford, incestuous or what ???

Do you think that Oracle meant 127p & not 27 p ?!?!

Roman/Boards
I agree, sadly ! It appears that Link are now effectively the fund manager as Woodford is out of the picture.
Link are really acting as liqidators so we can expect any shares they have will be sold as soon as reasonably possible, they are liquidators not investors after all.
The flip side of this, of course, is that if anyone is interested in taking a stake at a cut price they know who to approach with no reasonable offers turned down ! I'm thinking here of a smaller companies trust or fund, so if there is anyone interested then we can assume we will know sooner rather than later. It is not unreasonable to think that funds managers are running through the numbers, but given the managements performance in being tied up with the dynamic duo of Woodford & Barnett, even using Woodfords Chair as Mercia's I guess any buyer might wish to see a change at the top.

Well if you can sell it to the IC at that price, jolly good luck !
However if you had merely looked at the LSE website, upon which you are posting, they show the NAV at 37.97 as of April fools day.
I might respectfully point out to you that AIM has tumbled since then so I suspect that the FT, which do of course own the IC, is not far off the right number. for mid October.
Nevertheless I did also buy some today, but probably without your rather high expectations !
Did it never occur to you that if the IC were the bible of NAV's, that there would have been rather more of a higher price level than we are currently viewing ?
DYOR is a very sound motto.....