Member Info for Mr.Pepper

With a rights issue imminent (and assuming a fully subscribed uptake) you will be looking at one tenth what you're asking for, if you are lucky. Costain is taking a bet (perhaps will not eventuate) that it will cherry pick the parts of the business that fit-in with its business model (at least they have good managers). The trend is presently your friend, if you are a speculator/gambler, and let's face it, only these are the only delving into this stock at the moment. - Lastly, it is better the management keep mum and not talk, because whatever they say will be interpreted negatively. Actions are needed, not words. And avoid nasty smelling cheese.

No personal offence against accountants. One needs accounting - double entry book keeping was one of the truly great innovations of the industrial revolution. My point is, and I think I did not clarify this, is that MCHL should have built on its self-evident engineering strengths. This is simply common sense. And not diverted into areas that diluted its base of strength, complication its finances, and blurred what it was - a kind of big branding mistake that. Hopefully, other companies, of all kinds, will learn that consolidating one's strengths is the way to prosperity. This is just common sense, and the management failed this test. After all, we don't see the large account firms taking on an engineering role, (except of course financial engineering).

This company faces a long road to recovery. Finances can always be fixed, without enough time, and a meaningful rights issue. but the reputatiional damage will take longer to repair. This exemplifies the bizarre and tangential thinking of accountants running an engineering shop. The first point of recovery is getting swiftly back to the engineering roots. The other operations are a distraction, and are what is causing such reputational damage and a run on confidence. There is always the risk of contagion that other councils will follow on the heels of the latest contract cancellation, if for no other reason than, like market makers, councils are like sheep. Buckle down for a bumpy 2012.

You are a ramping fraud. People should be very, very, very wary to getting into this stock. A rights issue is surely imminent and that means this share price must first reverse. This company is caught in a debt trap, and they only way out is a cash infusion of some kind. The banks will not avail in this respect (that piles on more debt) so the alternative left is a rights issue, which should be more or less subscribed to. The 40p is illusion at his point in time. All I see are more frauds smelling of stale cheese who want to pump this share up so the frauds can jump out.

Some posters on this board are sounding quite delusional, are in denial of the facts, or simply engaging in ramping tactics. When it comes to MCHL, the trend if your friend, and the trend is obvious to anyone. There is no quick fix here. Gimmicks and pulling others in with claims of 'going north' is drivel at best. Recovery for this company is going to be a long slog. There is no way round this. Everyone has lost money in these markets. And recovery cannot be established on illusion, denial, or ramping. The balance sheet has to be bolstered. This is not a management problem, but one of liquidity and solvency issues. In all reason, this must imply a rights issue to raise funds, trim the debt, downsize superfluous assets and operations, and rebuild. There is no other way.

That Mouchel has not won as many contracts as expected follows on the heels of uncertainty in the balance sheet of the business - a counterparty does not want to get stuck with a party with too much risk associated with it. Hence the need to consolidate its balance sheet. Hence, a rights isssue is on the cards, I hear. Short term not so good for shareprice. Long term, good news, because finally they are getting on top of the problem, and see the need to bolster their balance sheet before they can win more contracts. The hard slog begins to take shape.

It still amazes me that this share was over 150 pence in March this year. It proves that analysts, market makers, and all the other miscellany of the financial madhouse have no idea what is going on inside companies. The shareholders have been atrociously let down by the management, and egregious misled by analysts and brokers, and damned by the institutional investors who lack the patience to wait out the storm.. If ever there was a showcase for stiff and fundamentally deep regulation, it is the Mouchel saga. Enough said. I fear more bloodletting before any meaningful uptick.

MCH|L is a comany that overstretched itself and is trying to shrink back to its core while fending off the onslaught of debt. . This is the main thing, not what it does (because it started out as a capable competent civil enginner. That proved a wee bit too dull for the accountant-trained managers who decided to veer off into quite unrelated services and thus dilute the core function for which the likes of Costain were eager to bid for for a hefty premiumn, but in liew of which hubris took these account managers with a certain disdain, the larger company walked away and Mouchel fell down. The failings are wholly the outcoime of human flaws and an example of misguided ambition by people who should have been content to build on Mouchels strengths as an engineer, where always its true value lay, as reflected in that erstwhile takeover bid. A truly terrible, totally avoidable saga.

If the share price were to keep sliding at this rate, about ten percent a day, it will be around 1 pence in 17 more trading days. Clearly, the institutions, in off-loading their holdings, are losing money by taking their time. Personally, I think there is something else afoot than merely institutional selling. Mostly, it is the crazy, insane state of the markets where everything seems to have become absurdly cheap. You must admit we are in the era of the madhouse. These market makers have proven themselves spectacularly inept on a par with the ineptitude of management of Mouchel. It beggers belief that one has a sound, robust, engineering company with solid roots and performance, and you end up trying to form a conglomerate structure doing god-knows-what. The engineering heart should be isolated from the rest and put back on a firm footing. Let the rest go. The engineering division will eventually make good on the losses, but not while it's weighed down by the rest of the onerous divisions, which are sapping the time and the talents of any competent manager still reside at Mochel. - Get back to basics, for goodness sake.

The only factor that is going to save this company, and so many others across the economic spectrum, is economic growth. Growth, not ever more dribble from well paid managers, consultants, and accountants. When I start seeing this crowd of 'service professionals' start buying the shares in lieu of submitting invoices for 'services rendered' then it's time to get moving. Growth is all that matters Not the euro, not anything but growth.

If one were to play and win the National Lottery today (all of the jackpot) one would have the option of buying the company and, based on the estimated value of the jackpot of £10 million,one would have £20 thousand to go on holiday with, or give to charity (based on the values I see as I write this note). - This rather trite aside is simply to demonstrate that this market is, indeed less than transparent at the best of times. However, the valuation we see is either a ruse to force holders to cash in their shares and take a loss, or wait it out in hope of the apocryphal takeover. Once companies are wounded this much, recovery is agonisingly slow, if at all. I don't know if and when the price will recover, but I know what it means to lose, and lose big, on stocks. And therein lies the rub - this management messed up big time. They ought to be prosecuted. They are worse than crooks, worse than thieves. Staggering incompetence like that demands a firing squad. Saying that, where will the share price go? Into the yellow, me thinks, like Yell Group. languishing near the bottom for who knows how long......

I have been startled at the outcome of the company, but standing back and looking at the confused picture, reveals how some otherwise reputable companies of old are full of dubious little secrets. In such cases, one has no option but to take direction and guidance from the markets. And my analysis of this (I could of course be wrong, as I have on other occasions) is that we have another Yell in the making, where a company languishes, and exists only to repay the debt of banks, bond-holders, and other sundry creditors. So, for what it's worth, I would take a punt on this if it goes to 7 pence. Otherwise, I am an observer only. Good luck to everyone, and I hope you recover your funds. I know what it's like to get caught out.

The points some people are making, when the voice a note of concern, is not related to the assets of the company, or its components parts, but the skill and application of the management team. On first inspection, It appears that the various component parts of Mouchel are insulated from the risks of any other, and thus can attract good, fair bidding in a sale. I can't surmise at this stage what will happen to the rump part(s) that remain. But a first consideration for any investor now surely must be the introduction of a fresh management team, as the present incumbents seem visibly tarnished with what we have read in the press, and otherwise speculated on. Hopefully it can see through to a new, smaller, compact, and more focussed company, like it was in the past.

The management have an enorous amount to answer for. As a minimum, they should waive their salaries and benefits and perks until some stability and direction is restored to this company. The problem with a lot of management today is that they have no conscience, morale, or decency. They are blackguards and opportunists.

A pointless, unnecessary and disruptive episode. A chairman should have been vetted by all vested interests and parties before being appointed. This demonstrates that the management is rattled, and I do not see why as the component businesses, especially on the engineering side, seem sound. This goes to prove that MCHL should have adhered to its core skills, and not branched out into unrelated fields. Do what you are good at. - Story here of the latest management fiasco: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/supportservices/8830484/Mouchel-chairman-David-Sugden-steps-down.html

How many punters, insistent that MCHL at a valuation of only £12 million, (and falling...???) would, were they to win Euro millions lottery of double that amount, actually spend half their jackpot and buy this company for cash? - I am a firm believe that the only transparency obtaining in markets is the insider knowledge and wheeling-dealing that goes on all the time, and those selling (or shorting) this stock know what the general investing public do not. Finally, those payments from the UAE were probably the cause of this debacle. And these Arabian chaps would sooner spend that money in a casino, and lose it all with pleasure, than pay their debts Because if one thing is more certain that death and taxes, its that these chaps love spending money on themselves to the damnation and detriment of everyone else. Mouchel should try and find a buyer in Arabia, because I don't se anyone in the West or Asia touching it with a bargepole.

By delaying annoucements of any kind until late November, whatever the reasons proferred, do not bode well, as fear, suspicion, and and the other banes of a rout set in. - I do not claim to know why the company accounts went so awry, but if I can proffer my own views on the matter, I would suspect that accounting problems stem from the Middle East, that is, the Arabian Gulf, the businesses in the Emirates, etc. Doing business in these countries is very much a risk on venture at th.e best of times. You have to be a really big organization, such as BAE systems, to be able to hold your own over there, since the government is your partner. For minnows such as Mouchel, they must contend with the shenanigans of local businessmen in a region notorious for skullduggery of the third kind. - Management needs to make some kind of statement to alleviate concerns. Silence is, quite frankly, deplorable.

Perhaps Mouchel thwarted the Constain bid because they were unable to rectify any accounting errors on their books, and needed more time, so they played hard to get. A takeover/merger would make eminent sense in a market such as this, where consolidation and synergies would play to both parties' adventage. It remains to be seen if anyone will come forward with a bid. In the meantime, the management would do well to make an annoucement, and to bring in some reputable firm to clean up the books. Moreover a meaningful statement from Mouchel's bankers would not go amiss in the current nervous climate.

On what basis - information - does Peel Hunt reach its conclsuion on 5p? Is this just guess work, did it pop out of the hat? where is the line between information and arrant disinformation?

The way the markets are behaving, it matters not a jot what analysts or brokers say. Just follow the herd. Moreover, if any of these so called experts put their money where their mouth is, I may be prepared to listen to what the blackguards have to say;