Member Info for workingstiff

Rustybucket - this is true enough. The lack of positivity, or even effective news management, from the new boys is one of the reasons I sold out before Christmas and am now on the side lines.

Lawrence, In broad terms opinion here seems to be divided as follows -

1 Pavel is straight and the new guys are crooked. Pavel is waging a campaign to try to wrest control of the company he and Hambro founded in order to save it.

2 Pavel is crooked and the new guys are straight. He is either trying to wrest control of the company so that he can carry on milking it, or he is bitter and would prefer to destroy the company than see his successors win, or both.

We don't know where the truth lies. It could be the first proposition, or the second, or it could be somewhere in between.

It is pretty clear UDF adheres to the second proposition. He has been suspicious of Pavel since he regained control of the company a few years ago, and made this clear BEFORE the coup last year. The point I was making was that from his standpoint the opinion he expressed is understandable.

Hard facts are in short supply but I think as an opinion it is understandable - and obvious.

Any shareholder should want to see an environment where sentiment is positive and new investment in the company is incentivised.

Having a former CEO lobbing verbal hand grenades at the management creates an environment where sentiment is negative and new investment is actively dis-incentivised.

If Pavel "goes away" there is a chance that the company gets some breathing space to turn sentiment positive.

This may come good in time. But it needs all this Pavel kerfuffle to die down AND the Bitcoin bubble to burst.

Whatever the outcome of this charge, it is probably good news for POG as it puts Pav on the back foot and limits his scope for trouble making.

For now. Will be watching and waiting from the sidelines for a while

Market sentiment is very negative on gold just now. This has to be having an effect.

Iran

"Tell me how pog going to pay 500m in 2 years time?"

Pay some of it off and raise new bonds to cover the rest perhaps? That is what other companies do.

UDF I wasn't overjoyed to see Pete and Pav come back in 2018, but it was the 2019 convertible bond issue that really turned me against them.

"finger in the till"

Lawrence - I think that is what the forensic review is setting out to find evidence of. It may not lead to legal action. The review may never see the light of day. But it may be used to get Pav to back off.

"i really cant see their argument , why do they want bad news from the last few years , really cant see how this is going to help ?"

I haven't been paying much attention to this lately, unforgivable really, since I own 1m of them, but tonight I've been reading back through these posts and in the absence of any clarity from the company I surmise the following:

Pavel and associates have found ways of obstruct the new management of the company from doing their jobs, through changes to the articles and practices in subsidiaries where they still have influence. It seems there are similarities between what they are doing now, and what they did to oust the management team in 2018 (who had replaced them the year before).

As things stand there is the possibility of years of litigation before the obstruction is cleared. I think the purpose of the Forensic review is that if clear evidence is found that the Pavel & Co acted illegally, they could be put on the back foot, ie: either prosecuted through the criminal courts, or forced to stop the obstruction and legal filibustering, or both.

If I am right - happy to be corrected - Strukov and his allies anticipated the kind of obstruction we are seeing now, and the Forensic Review proposed at the outset was their way of dealing with it.

Gold and the dollar are both being dumped. Bitcoin seems to be the thing right now. Davidthegrim(?), who seems to have left us, had some interesting things to say on currencies and bitcoin. I wonder if governments will start to move against it - as he suggested.

which one do you believe? Are thy both true?

I'm scratching my head about the adjustment to the P&L, to be honest. I can see that the value of the convertible bonds had increased. I just don't see how the liability increased.

A cynic might say that it wouldn't have been politic to produce an upbeat set of results for a period when the old firm were in charge.

Rusty - did I read it wrong? Oops, sorry.

Rusty - I think the loss was down to the convertible bonds increase in book value BEFORE they were converted. Once converted, they disappear from the books.

The volume of trades is fairly low this morning. We haven't seen the normal post results surge in activity. So although the SP is well down as I write, there isn't much impetus behind the drop at the moment.

It looks like a paper loss, without which we would have seen a profit of 100m. The conversions, and the reduction in the share price will largely remove this going forward. I'm not sure if that will result in a reversal, and a paper profit next time.

This was an opportunity for the new team to get the bad news out of the way, I guess. My main concern is that they have alluded to, but haven't really quantified the extent to which the recalcitrant subsidiaries are hurting them, and there is no indication as to how they intend to get these subsidiaries back on side. They are all big boys. They should be able to do more than whine about it in the half year report.