Member Info for Forensic505

Theborn:

Agree on the HSBC - that has gone on far too long. I saw frustration there - the CFO should have obviously nailed this ages ago. Poor.

BBLs - you are not right on the timings. They only started with Barclays in January of this year. Clearly the pilot needed to run and show results before anyone else stepped forward. It obviously has as now (and tbf very quickly). They made the point that they didnt get all the cases in January, they have been drip fed over the months it seems. Barclays are expanding it and new bank on board. I have no doubt that the "politics" in this area are very complex as there are so many stakeholders: Govnt, Banks, British Business Bank, Insolvency Service and then the banks' customers (with all the regulation that surrounds that). Treacherous but the opportunity is big and it sounds like they are working at it as hard as we could hope.

I have read comments that the managment team are too quick to announce any bad news. So now things have turned in the favour who can blame them for a brighter tone. And lets face it (as many have said here) they were dealt a truly awful hand with a 2 year shut down of insolvencies during covid. It obviously takes time to build that back up. Business is never a flick of the switch. For me this is a medium term play but i can see the environment for them being positive for quite some time. DYOR as ever and GLA.

My summary:

1. Core business going like a train

2. Bigger Administration cases now picking up to pre-pandemic level

3. Fascinating BBL opportunity. Dont think any other company can unlock the value here and it is huge ! (£1.3 billion - £6.9 billion and growing everyday as others default). But will they get a fair run at it ? Government seems to want it to just be forgotten about ! But its the biggest (£50 Billion) bank robbery ever, and designed when Rishi Sunak was the Chancellor...

4. Cartel cases - going well. Will be a nice windfall when it comes, whatever the level.

5. Bank covenants being sorted but we need clarity on that once it is completed

6. Avg case completion size: they missed a trick (or maybe they'll do it at the year end): if you recalculate excl the BBLs it is not down 18% as they said in their Trading Update. It is almost exactly the same as last year. That is very important for my valuation (which is fundamentally number of cases x avg gross profit per case less overheads). That formula is simple but is works really well. Dont know why their broker makes it so complicated and with nonsense numbers (eg think they have Rev forecast for this year of £13-4m....Mano are already at £11m. Mad).

7. Cannacord yesterday repeated their statement that this could be one of best financial services sector recovery stocks on the market

With the carnage that is only just starting to hit the UK economy (which I think many commentators are materially underestimating quite how bad it will be), I think this company has got a very good flight path ahead for the next 3-5 years of very good growth. Their recent Trading Update covered quite a lot in a short space. So I am looking for reinforcement of those messages and the foundation of a solid platform to launch from here. Certainly not expecting any dividend. Completely the wrong time for that - their job is to get their full resources to work now.

100% agreed Da Master and Tommy15.

This stock is (I think) down about 60+% from its IPO a couple of years ago. Dont think it ever traded above its IPO price, which is pretty shocking for a company that is meant to be an IPO specialist!

They would have therefore upset a lot of their own institutional clients who supported their IPO but...time has passed...

I remember some talk a few years ago about a Euro Bank looking to maybe buy them. The Government is looking to stimulate small company growth (critical for the UK as a whole). So maybe time for a nibble and lock it away for a couple of years ? Would welcome informed thoughts.

Indeed. Has started to creep up nicely. I have noticed that the number of Administrations is now (finally) starting to accelerate and that is very much FRP's specialism.

Goodness - didn’t think this could go much lower…looking terminal.

Tommy - please refer to their TU RNS. Reads very clearly to me.

Exactly Littlejimmy.

He went from saying: “I spoke to a whole group of IPs…”

To saying: “I spoke to one IP….”

Then he went very quiet when the truth came out that “no IPs” was the case.

Embarrassing but also pretty funny !

FoMo: if the IP refers the case on early rather than sitting on it on a CFA with his lawyers for years, then IP costs will be minimal and there will be no need for external legal costs. Therefore the full benefit will be for the creditors. Pay attention and follow the calculations: Mano pays £40k in costs - that is the lawyers fee right there. Now go and book a golf lesson or something.

Got cut off. Just to finish:

"Half to creditors: £80k. End".

Sorry to read about your experience in 2011 Da_Master. But it happens a lot. Practically every contractor I have ever spoken to had an unhappy experience of doing work for a company, then that company going bust and nothing ever being paid out on his invoices. We then look at the Liquidator's Report and you see the Director/Owner took all the cash/assets/customers from the business a few months before liquidation for pennies.... Almost every story in the press has the same detail: "unsecured creditors likely to get 2p in the £..."

One of the (sadly) many problems with the UK insolvency regime is that Liquidators/Administrators will sit on potential claims for far too long. Costs then rack up. The lawyers the IP employs will be on a CFA (they get paid double if there is a recovery but zero if no recovery) and the IP may well be on a CFA himself. The avg insolvency litigation claim is for around £400k. They usually settle at around half that: £200k. The IP and the lawyers know that. Its all laid out in the Professor Walton reports I referred to earlier.

So if the Director has a fairly nice house that he bought in say 1998 or the early noughties that will have almost zero mortgage on it now. All equity value. Say that house is worth £800k. So the director can release equity to settle the claim. But his own lawyers know that aswell....so a cost game then kicks off over several years:

The IP's lawyers write lots of letters setting out the claim. The Director's lawyers respond. They are all billing time of course and they know, ultimately the Director has that asset. That game of letters goes around and around. For years. Why doesnt the IP issue the claim ? Because then it gets risky. If the IP eventually loses at trial he is personally liable for the Directors costs (which will probably be around £200-300k by then). But the IP is happy. He is also racking up "time costs" and also knows about that nice house the Director has....Eventually he takes an ATE insurance policy to cover him in case he loses. The problem is another game is going on there. The ATE policy for £200-300k of costs if the IP loses will cost the IP a 50%-100% premium. Not joking. Fact. Oh and this is the model that our friend FoMo is promoting of course lol.

Eventually costs are rising hugely as the trial approaches (both sides need a barrister at this point of course and they aint cheap). The Director finally agrees to pay, say, £200k and gets an equity release on his house. The IP accepts that £200k because he hasnt been paid a bean for the last 3 years working on this case and if it all goes pear-shaped at trial his ATE policy might not cover all the Director costs and he is personally liable !! At that stage the ATE, the barrister, the solicitor CFA and the IP CFA do what they call a "carve up". They carve up every penny of that £200k. Nowt left for creditors.

Mano version: case settled in 12 months at £200k. Costs: £40k. £160k left. Half to creditors:

Da-Master: fair question. The answer is that Mano get their cases from Liquidators/Administrators ("IPs"). Under the Insolvency Act 1986, their job is primarily to maximise the returns to creditors. That is what Mano delivers.

Using the previous CFA/ATE model costs of cases ran at around 150-200% of the actual damages being claimed (reference the 2,000+ page Jackson Report on UK Civil Litigation). The Jackson Reforms, implemented in UK insolvency litigation in 2016, means that the costs (CFA and ATE) have to come out of the damages. Therefore zero return to the insolvent estate (creditors) because those costs exceed the damages awarded. Utterly hopeless for creditors and therefore IPs failing in their statutory duty if they use CFA/ATE. A disgrace that many still do. But things are much better than they were 10 years ago.

By contrast Mano's long term average is that costs run at only 15-25% of the damages (recoveries). In the main they do that by settling cases early. Avoiding the very expensive litigation stage of trials. Therefore creditor returns are exponentially higher under the Mano Model. That transforms the IPs work into a sustainable and ethical business. Which is why Mano's annual cases have risen from just 3 in 2010 to well over 300 per annum in the last 12 months. It delivers.

FoMO,

You have been found to lie on this board before. The LSE has removed the more libellous and defamatory posts.

You now show a breathtakingly poor and twisted understanding of litigation generally and insolvency litigation, in particular. Your analysis of even selective cases displays further deep ignorance, eg IP fees and lawyer fees are incurred long before and long after Mano has done its job on a claim. You are either deeply stupid, in need of urgent professional counselling or have an axe to grind, because all this has been explained, at length, not just by Mano, but the entirety of the Lord Justice Jackson Reforms (which paid special attention to the CFA/ATE abuses in insolvency and pointed to Funders generally as the way forward); as well as the three reports done for the profession by Professor of Law Peter Walton.

I am not going to waste my time here schooling you. Its all out there on the web if anyone is inclined.

Or maybe you are just out to try to mislead investors with your "Fear of Missing out". Weird...

Get some help mate or maybe start a new hobby or something. Your toxic bile here is shameful.

This is a superb company but I fear not even they will fare well over the coming 12 months. Generally, I think many are underestimating just how tough the UK economy is going to get, particularly for the consumer. They drifted down to 700-800p during Covid and that was an excellent long term entry point. After that, with a little patience, they will get back to 1300-1400 in due course. I am planning repeating that trick this time.

Very useful post by Extrader, thank you. That was exactly the timeline I was thinking will be key on this.

Statement of the obvious I think but the decision on the Performance Bond will be the key to the Share Price over the next 2-3 months (and the direction of this case over potentially the next few years or a lot shorter depending on the order the Judge hands down on the Bond). If no bond set or fairly small bond: this is likely to drag this facade out for many more years. No jeopardy for Argentina. If the Bond is large ($ 2-4+Billions) it should accelerate serious and very material settlement discussions.

Many others on here are far better read-in than me on all of this (and I am no legal expert) this but this is my simplistic take on this. Fascinating situation...GLA

£2m buy just went through. Unusual and interesting....

Well said Littlejimmy. I saw LSE took his initial post down pretty quickly so I presume their libel unit was onto it pretty fast. Others should report it, as I have done. As you say: utterly despicable abuse.

On a more positive note: I see someone on another board has reported a Canaccord analyst saying this morning that Mano “could be one of the best recovery plays in financials through 2024”.

I thought it was an excellent update. Very much in line with Hardboy’s really superb post below from a few days ago below. If only these boards had more intelligent comment like that and less horseplay from idiotic types like FoMo.

Two days of 10% down is really bad....even in this bear market

I think acearp was on the sauce a little too early today :-) Never seen such a pile of gibberish...