Infa corporate governance?7 Jul 2019 08:25
Thought I would hack a few lines together on what I believe is currently holding back Infa.
I have been clear on my views of the project and JW/Arun – I have zero concerns on Islandmagee as a project and its need to be developed. My average buy-in is around 0.8p and I am holding a fairly large position so am feeling some pain right now but will hold these shares until glory or bust.
I do though think we have a large corporate problem. From their backgrounds JW and Arun are extremely highly qualified to execute Islandmagee but I don’t believe either has previously run a public company and it is showing – e.g. unrealistic messages to shareholders, random RNSs, etc etc
Infa is a tiny AIM company but we need a clear path to secure institutional investors – the like of Prudential, Fidelity etc who will buy large positions and hold for years. This will provide stability, bring other institutions, increase research coverage etc.
Right now no institution will touch Infa which means the shares are in the hands of emotional retail investors and day traders which causes huge volatility, profit taking, irrational trading etc
From a governance perspective we have two great executives but no Chairman – JW is holding both hats which breaks corporate governance 101. Malcolm is clearly a professional NED that probably puts his name to anything that pays a few quid and he seems to be there simply to make up the numbers without any actual gas storage experience.
We need a high quality Chairman with real public company experience who can take the burden off JW and Arun and deal with all the public market issues. We also need a couple of real NEDs with credible gas storage backgrounds to provide additional support and again improve governance. We also need a new PR firm or hire a dedicated PR/IR person. This will let JW and Arun get on with the business of taking Islandmagee forwards and leave the RNS, regulatory, shareholder, governance etc issues to others. This is also how we start to attract smaller institutions who then bring in the bigger ones.
Potential Chairman/NED candidates can sign NDAs and really get up to speed as to what is going on with the company so I don’t see any reason why they can’t be brought on now.
JW – you have my full support but let’s please get the corporate governance sorted so you can build the project and not spend your time dealing with corporate nonsense!