RE: Peter Hambro Sent Me This Via LinkedIn2 Feb 2021 19:26
I realised I needed to edit it as the questions merge with the answers
Me: Would you prefer me not to raise these matters on the LSE and ADVN message board.
PH:I am perfectly happy that you should talk about all this on the Chat Rooms. I have dodged them because I did not want to find myself spitting out Material Price Sensitive Information by mistake.
Me:As you know I'm a simple soul who always wanted the people that founded POG to remain at the helm
PH: Thank you.
after the storm we'd been through cause by ambitiously over-reaching and the gold price imploding,
The GamesStop story and Reddit are very much like toe POG story – only Reddit didn’t exist and there was no way of mobilising the small investor. The people who brought POG down all acted together. They called themselves the “Ad Hoc Committee”, they used Ashursts as their lawyers and they shorted the stock. We complained to Takeover Panel, who did nothing. In the end Sothic, for example, closed its £7 per share Short at £0.05.
The arrival of Vekselberg as a big shareholder and the decision Andrew Amos, manager of M&G’s “Distressed Debt Fund” to side with the Shorts generally and Vekselberg in particular was very hard to challenge. I went as a Whistle Blowere to see Anne Richards, CEO of M&G but got dumped with some minions from whom I never heard again.
Our mistakes were:-
Not funding the POX project
Not hedging the gold price
Relying on our cash flow to fund the shortfall
Issuing a convertible bond that unlocked to problem of being short.
but IÂ knew it was your baby and I'm convinced you and Pavel wanted to make it all good.
We tried very hard and even borrowed US$30 million ourselves to underwrite the Rights Issue
Last years the SP took off and was going great guns until Should Be Struckoff led the coup .
The politics of all this were weird. Lustiger and his company Everest, working with Strukov have wrecked the company.
Me: So where now?
PH:I have sold almost all my shares.
Me:Has Pavel got a strong case
PH:Yes.
As I understand it, he paid for the building that POG had ordered because POG could not pay for it and leased it back to POG. When he became a Senator he was required to divest himself of his investments and so he gave the building to his son. When POG had enough money to buy it the building was independently valued. POG’s Audit Committee, because it was a “Related Party” transaction was asked to opine on the possible purchase and recommended it to the Board. The Auditors were present at the meeting. The Board received the recommendation and accepted it. The Auditors performed their own valuation based on the rentals and agreed with the valuer. Peel Hunt, the POG broker did the same thing. The transaction was disclosed on page 195 of the 2018 Annual Report, which carried a clean Audit Opinion.
Me: Are you still at IRC ; it must all be stressfully odd
PH: Yes, and it is doing very wel
Sign In
Follow the stocks
