Member Info for Bornand

Liberium putting the knife into house builders today downgrades T.W, BDEV, PSN to sell, citing margin pressure.

Would also love to see J.H expense account.

Comprehensive vote in favour at todays appeal hearing

http://qualitysmallcaps.co.uk/ceo-or-fd-interviews/software-radio-tech-srt-simon-tucker-ceo-interview-21-oct-2015/

Paul Scott is interviewing S.T tomorrow (Wed 21 Oct 2015). The interview will be published on his new site, QualitySmallCaps.co.uk in a few days' time, with a transcript.

With todays agreed bid for Amlin, could we become the next target ?.

https://audioboom.com/boos/3529979-talking-small-caps-with-carmensfella-of-sharesocuk. Vislink is again discussed about 8 min 30 secs in.

http://issuu.com/ukinvestormagazine/docs/september2015-final/22

Ideally, they should each have distinct roles, but at Vislink John Hawkins is both chairman and chief executive and Ian Davies doubles as finance director and company secretary. Both have been awarded the new ‘growth’ shares by the three non-executive directors, whose own fees were increased by a third last year (to £40,000) – on the recommendation of Mr Hawkins and Mr Davies. Strangely for a chief executive, Mr Hawkins is contracted to work only 161 days a year. His salary and benefits of £438,000 last year equate to about £700,000 on a full-time basis. He waived his £304,000 bonus last year, but there was a reason for that. Previously, he had been paid as if he was a consultant, but HMRC insisted that tax and national insurance should have been paid, as for any employee. The bonus was waived to ‘offset’ (do they mean ‘partially offset’?) this liability. And Mr Hawkins has sailed close to the wind before in the role of chief executive. He left Atex after a conflict of interest (he employed his wife and daughter despite being told not to) and his high pay drew criticism at Anite where he ended up being ousted after poor results. Scale up his waived bonus to a full-time equivalent basis and throw in the 2m Vislink shares he received in March 2015 (with a similar amount likely in November 2016), and he’s raking in the equivalent of about £2m a year – steep for running a company with ongoing net profit of about £5m. Why, shareholders ask, is it now introducing an overgenerous and ill-thought-out longterm ‘incentive’ policy? The theory is that disgruntled shareholders ensure that directors limit pay awards but this is where corporate governance falls down. Some Vislink shareholders are trying to do just that (see www.freesharedata.com/   vislink-poll). But others have cut and run. By selling their shares, the number of votes the activists can muster has fallen. They fear that if Vislink gets away with this, other Aim companies will be tempted to follow suit.

One way for a company to raise eyebrows is to create a new class of shares with different rights to those already issued. When these new shares are only available to senior executives, warning bells ring. Yet this is exactly what Vislink announced on 1 July and it's outraged many shareholders. Normally a parent company owns its trading subsidiaries directly. Vislink has now created a holding company to sit between the two. The new 'growth' shares are in the holding company and, apart from being a device to create a new class of shares, there appears to be no business reason behind it. The plan is for these growth shares to convert into ordinary shares in Vislink in June 2018. The conversion rate will cream off 15.38 per cent of Vislink's market capitalisation above £85m at that time. If the market capitalisation is less than that (it's currently about £65m), they will be valueless. Why did shareholders agree to this? The short answer is that they didn't. Vislink slipped it through just a month after its annual meeting, where it was not on the agenda. This is where Aim stocks differ: had it been listed on the main market, Vislink would have had to seek shareholder approval. Aim stocks, apparently, don't require this. Curiously, Vislink only left the main market last year. At the time, it was said that its migration to Aim would reduce the regulatory and legal burden (for which read: safeguards) associated with acquisitions. And, although they did not mention it, pay. The share price needed to hit the £85m hurdle rate currently works out at 70p. A surge in the stock market would do the job for them. So could a spike. Another odd thing is that although Vislink says that its intention is to link any reward only to the performance of the company's share price, it expresses the hurdle in terms of market capitalisation. Since this is the number of shares in issue times the share price, what's to stop Vislink merely issuing more shares? They've thought of that. The value will be adjusted "to account for any equity placing, share buyback or special dividend that occurs in the period". It sounds reassuring but what does "equity placing" mean? Vislink's purchase of Pebble Beach Systems last year was partly funded through issuing shares - not an 'equity placement' in the normal meaning of the word. Further bolt-on acquisitions over the next three years could bring further dilution and so will shares created to satisfy outstanding share options. This would make the target share price lower. Some shareholders point to the strong growth over the last three years in Vislink's business of collecting and transmitting video and data from their source to the point of use. But this has depended on acquisitions, and quality of management matters. Corporate governance is all about ensuring that they guard shareholders' rights and those chiefly responsible are the chairman and the company secretary. Ideally, th

For the latest update. http://boards.fool.co.uk/i-have-been-receiving-so-many-calls-and-emails-13250697.aspx

David Stredder from Share Society talks to Share Radio & in particular features on Vislink. https://audioboom.com/boos/3379592-time-for-a-look-at-small-caps-with-carmensfella

Thanks for the support. Contact has already been extended to a couple of institutions, naturally they wont publicly put there name on a action B.B. The action group requires 5% total voting rights to call an EGM, within 3 days we are closing in on half that figure already. A meeting apparently has been set up already with the remunerations non exec. I personally remain very confident that this action group can succeed.

davidosh 7 Jul'15 - 10:15 - 8272 of 8273 0 0 My thanks to every shareholder who has joined the campaign to change the badly designed and greedy share awards. Do add your name and thoughts on the website if you have not already done so and incredibly we already have 100 without one single shareholder coming out in support of the scheme (the directors clearly too shy !! lol) http://www.freesharedata.com/vislink-poll I will be speaking to the institutional holders to find out what they think about it and I have spoken to the Remcom chairman and made him well aware of the website containing comments from all his unhappy shareholders who were never consulted. I have given him seven days to set up a meeting time for him to address us all and explain the merits and alignment of this scheme. I do not expect the executive directors to be there. ShareSoc (www.sharesoc.org) are being briefed and the whole issue surrounding how this can happen so easily without shareholder consultation and just after an Agm is up for debate and will be fully aired using this as a test case I am sure. Do support everything we are doing and if not already a member of ShareSoc please join and support our aim to help all investors. ------------------------------------------------ Copied & pasted from the AD**N BOARD

He was kicked out of Anite and the Investors Chronicle had him listed as one of their seven 'Britains Worst Bosses' and highlighted his sizeable salary... IT services firm Anite has revealed that chief executive John Hawkins has left his position. Non-executive director David Thorpe will take over until a permanent replacement is found. Anite reported that underlying pre-tax profits for the year to April 2003 would be at the lower end of expectations, and that market conditions remain very tough. Mr Hawkins oversaw the transition of Anite from a low-margin electronics firm into a fast-growing IT services group. But a profit warning last year, concern over earnout agreements attached to acquisitions and rumblings over Mr Hawkins' sizeable salary sent the share price tumbling. IC VIEW Mr Hawkins was one of seven chief executives named by IC last December as"Britain's Worst Bosses". His exit means that only two of those bosses remain at the helm. But that's little comfort for shareholders nursing heavy losses. That said he managed to cash in nearly all his options before the share price collapsed... http://www.investegate.co.uk/anite-group-plc--aie-/rns/director-shareholding/200112121628455991O/

Here is a link for the action group. http://www.freesharedata.com/vislink-poll

John Hawkins was actually paid £742,198 in 2014 and not just a measly £438k as reported everywhere. He had a £303k bonus that was used to pay his tax bill to HMRC for previous years. I suggest anybody that is concerned about the ridiculous remunerations' package should read Paul Scotts blog. http://www.stockopedia.com/columns/paul-scotts-uk-small-cap-value-report-1/

1. I would never take any notice of any poster who has to SHOUT. 2 If its overvalued why don't you state your case, what metric are you using to come to your conclusion, I cant wait for you to educate me !!

Modified planning permission was granted the back end of last week in respect of the supermarket in Ayr, I have spoken to the F.D. an announcement regarding the AGM, accompanied by a full update will be announced very shortly ( my interpretation was either this week or just after Easter.)

With a quick back of the fag packet calculations, I reckon this could be worth another 4-5p to the N.A.V.