RE: Hard to fathom.11 Dec 2020 13:28
Hi 99icecream,
.."I don't understand why Elphick and Co. would agree to be bought out cheaply..."
In no particular order...
(a) 'cheap' is relative : the founder developers probably got most of their seed capital back at the time of IPO, when there was a concurrent founder shareholder offering; since then , they've mostly piggy-backed on Other People's Money aka Xstrata. So, arguably , ANYTHING they get now is good;
(b) they're not getting any younger, Elphick is around 60....and I'm sure they were looking for a 'quick turn';
(c) Elphick's other public investment GEMD has underperformed :
"That familiar tune you may be hearing in the back of your mind – assuming you are old enough to remember it – while reviewing the history of GEM Diamonds is by Mary Hopkin and it runs: “Those were the days my friend/We thought they’d never end/We’d sing and dance for ever and a day”. So it must have seemed for Elphick and his backers when he launched GEM on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 when he raised £285m and the company was worth around $1bn. Fast forward to December last year when GEM had a market capitalisation of around $94m. To be fair, just about the entire diamond sector has taken a pounding but GEM’s fall from grace is all the more dramatic given Elphick’s history with De Beers and the Oppenheimer family. We actually wrote in 2008 that if anyone was likely to replace Nicky Oppenheimer as “the king of diamonds”, it was Elphick."
https://www.miningmx.com/rainmakers/profile/26
(d) I can't imagine Elphick is in the poorhouse, but his 80m or so shares at the mooted 1:1 GLEN would be worth ca £ 200m, which I'm sure would come in handy...Keith Everitt with 20m (£ 50m), Julian Higgins with 14m (£35m), Howarth (ditto) and AI and Seritza would think Xmas had come early......and these total approx 50% of shares. Plus all the original co-investors below 3%...
All IMO
ATB
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