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Aero Inventory: we implore small shareholders to write to the LSE
Posted 18/11/09
Jim Tucker, the KPMG partner and lead administrator said he was in early stage discussions with parties, including both trade and financial buyers, about purchasing all or part of the struggling company. Mr Tucker is apparently of the opinion that it could take between two and three years to stabilise and turn round the business – not terribly encouraging for a buyer and perhaps an indication that ‘the business’ as a going concern is surely just about worthless, with the only value residing in the stock!
Let’s hope the LSE, FSA, SFO (a worrying number of 3 letter acronym organisations) can both learn something from this debacle and come down hard on those responsible. The loss that might be suffered by many small shareholders is bad enough but it also does a disservice to all those well managed AIM companies (of which there are many) who are doing their best to get through the current recession and attract investor interest.
Senior management of Aero Inventory has enriched itself over the past few years at the expense of shareholders. As we reported previously, the Executive Directors received in aggregate US$5.3m in 2008 and US$3.6m in 2007. Wouldn’t it be a nice gesture if they contributed to the administrators’ fees – one can but dream! It’s generally tough for small shareholders to go after the Directors so they will have to rely on those three letter acronyms referred to previously to act on their behalf.
Having paid themselves handsomely over the past few years one can’t argue that Directors wouldn’t be able to finance a defence.
JP Morgan Cazenove, the group’s nomad and joint broker, somewhat surprisingly doesn’t appear to have issued a research note on the business for a considerable time or perhaps they have only distributed this to chosen clients! This appears highly unusual….
Go to http://www.investorschampion.com/research/company/aero-inventory to download the full commentary
This entry was posted 2 years, 2 months ago and was filed under Aero Inventory.
