It’s another shocking day for UK Share-holders as the suspended Rivington Street Holdings goes into administration. I did warn investors some months ago that the company had major problems.
What really makes the blood boil is that Rivington could have sold t1ps and Minesite last year for a hefty chunk of change, this would have allowed them to fill up their coffers . Sadly the company choose a different road which has now lead to destruction/administration. The responsibility for which rests with the RIVP Management & Board. Take a bow CEO Mark Robertson, Chairman Jim Mellon, NED’s Denham Eke, David Gibson. A blot on your CV’s chaps!
Here’s my opinion on what has gone on behind the scenes.
T1ps.com – Worth Minus £300,000 or less and the truth about the Jim Mellon purchase
As you know I did make a tongue in cheek offer of £1 for t1ps.com but that offer is withdrawn. Jim Mellon bought the operation from Rivington for an effective £0 but I reckon he has overpaid.
Rivington publically stated that a bid a year ago for t1ps.com Ltd “failed”. The truth is that the bidders (some big City names) were ready to go ahead and had funding but at the last minute Rivington’s directors changed their minds and pulled out of the sale. Rivington instead borrowed £1 million from Mellon at 10% interest. Months later Mellon was given an option to buy t1ps & Minesite personally for £100,000. So Rivington paid its interest of £100,000. Mellon handed that back and bought the operations. Net cash to Rivington £0. But of course the £1 million debt to Mellon remained.
Rivington’s shareholders must be thanking Mellon and his fellow directors for not going ahead with the original sale. Before Jim instructs his lawyers, I should say that I have obtained from an overseas source a copy of the email from Rivington to the buyers of t1ps in which Rivington (shares suspended pending administration) pulled out.
Now back to t1ps. Under the inspired leadership of their grandly titled, Director of New Business, Richard (Dickie) Gill, existing business has collapsed. In the first year of Dickies reign subscriptions to t1ps.com the website, slumped by approx. 80% and if trends are to be believed are still falling, whilst The Sharecrazy website has not seen an article since March 25th. It still boasts in it’s blurb: “We feature … short sellers Lucian Miers and the king of the bear raiders Evil Knievil. Our Bulletin Board sees daily posts from top share tipsters such as Richard Gill, Steve Moore and James Faulkner. Malcolm Stacey heads the line up on our controversial blogs” Of course three of those gentleman no longer work there ( Miers, Moore & Stacey) at all while the others have not posted on the site for almost a year.
The websites of James Faulkner and Zak Mir now have less than 150 subscribers between them – down by at least 60% over the first year of Dickies’ dynamic leadership…..
I would imagine that the cashburn even for the likes of the multi-zillionaire Jim Mellon is giving cause for concern. The strange thing here is that Jim Mellon is one of the cleverest financial City bods one could ever meet. So how he ended up in this situation is more than likely down to ego. Big egos bruised are susceptible to sweet whispers.
I am an honourable man so I offer my expertise to help Jim Mellon out. I am prepared to take it off his hands or help him restructure the whole shebang for a fair price. Obviously heads will have to roll; those that advised Jim and whispered sweet utterings will have to go back to the North Yorkshire moors! I cannot say fairer than that.
If Jim Mellon wants to meet up secretly for a chat then he knows how to contact me. Confidentiality guaranteed. I note that with nearly all of his star writers already having moved over to his competitors then Jim knows that my sweepstake on who will be next to quit or be fired is thus;
Dickie Gollum (unemployable?)
Zak Mir (Top Technical analyst)
James Faulkner (Who?)
There are a some other young turks there but for the life of me I’ve never heard of them. But hey we’ve all got to start at the bottom.
Dan.
RIVINGTON STREET HOLDINGS PLC
ISDX: RIVP
20 November 2013
Rivington Street Holdings Plc
(“RSH”, the “Company”)
Notice of Intention to Appoint Administrators
The Directors of the Company would advise that further to the announcement regarding the suspension of trading of the Company’s shares on 3 October 2013, a Notice of Intention to Appoint an Administrator has been filed over each of Rivington Street Holdings (UK) Limited, ExEvents Limited and Bluecurve Limited. This action follows further uncertainty surrounding the future viability of these trading operations.
The directors continue to monitor the position and will make further announcements as appropriate.
END
In the interests of fairness,here,I feel it necessary to point out that,a few months before the shares in Rivington Street Holdings began a rapid collapse,Tom Winnifrith asserted in a webcast that the shares – which stood at over 40 pence at the time – represented decent value..
After the shares had more than halved from that point,the reason that Tom gave for this fall was that a man had died and the shares in his estate had had to be sold.Okay,but there were other reasons for the share price fall which Tom failed to mention at that point !
The circumstances in which Richard Gill and James Faulkner were asked to turn things around for T1ps and Watshot were very difficult.Some of Tom Winnifrith’s tips were not doing particularly well,and James still had to deal with the legacy of some ill-advised tips from Luke Heron on Watshot.
Tom Winnifrith has turned down the opportunity of explaining what went wrong at Rivington Street Holdings on several occasions..The poor idiots like myself who believed in Tom still don’t really know what went wrong – and we probably never will.At the very least,I feel that the company was too acquisitive – and that some of the blame for its sad demise must lie with Tom as its CEO.If Tom wants explain tol us poor downtrodden shareholders what really happened,we’d be very interested to hear his story.After all,the dust has well and truly settled now.
Hi nonteadrinker.
As I understand it Winnifrith has been gagged by a confidentiality clause he signed in the compromise agreement with RIVP and thus cannot comment on the matter. However this may change once the administrators are actually officially appointed.
However my honest opinion/story about t1ps/MS being sold to Mellon for an effective £0 rather than to two bidders who offered a hefty chunk of change which would have left RIVP debt free in Sept 2012 is correct. The bids did not “fail” as RIVP announced, RIVP pulled out.
If you’d like to email me any questions you would like to put to Winnifrith, Mellon or Richard Gill then please do so. I will try to speak to them all this week.
The sad fact here is that Jim Mellon is one of those city bods who is a well respected chap just how he got into this situation is beyond me. I like Mellon and I like what he has done he’s a good guy so I am pretty sure that he’s some how lost his way with the whole shebang. Too many advisors telling him what they think he wants to hear and not what is actually going on.
Dan
Okay,the dust has well and truly settled now.It is over four years later.It looks to me as if confidentiality clauses exist so that shareholders like myself can be treated like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed shit ! Neither Tom,Jim nor anybody else has clarified what happened. Tom has made much of the point that Rivington had assets like Minesite that could have been sold so the company needn’t have died. To coin one of his favourite phrases ‘that don’t impress me much’ – because there would have been precious little left for the shareholders,anyway.