Breaking news. It’s being reported that the 3 fraudsters at the heart of Quindell PLC (LON: QPP) Have got the boot. Resignations announced tomorrow via an RNS. The chairman of Quindell, Robert Terry is to ‘step down’ following a turbulent few months during which billions of pounds have been wiped off its value.
Quindell is poised to announce tomorrow that Robber Terry will leave the board immediately, just days after the emergence of an unusual financial arrangement relating to his shareholding in the company. This was exposed by Tom Winnifrith and Lucien Miers and other writers at shareprophets. Credit goes to them for sticking to their guns despite legal threats of dire financial ruin. Hats off to shareprophets Miers, Winnifrth, Somerville and a whole host of other writers/bloggers who helped to expose the Quindell fraudsters.
Laurence Moorse, the finance director, is to leave the board after the 2015 year’s annual meeting but will remain at the company for a further 12 months, while Steve Scott, a non-executive director who has served on Quindell’s board for more than five years, will also step down.
Quindell RNS Alert!
David Currie, a former banker at Investec, will replace Terry on a temporary basis, pending the appointment of a permanent successor.
The news of Terry’s exit will be the latest chapter in a torrid period for Quindell, which is listed on London’s junior Aim stock market and has become one of the City’s most talked-about companies.
Quindell fleeced £200m from investors a year ago with a promise to “revolutionise the insurance industry” by offering a one-stop shop for car insurers.
It provides a range of services which help insurers assess and treat drivers and passengers, leading to the formation of a joint venture with the RAC, the roadside recovery service.
The partnership was hailed as the beginning of a far-reaching initiative that would involve installing more than 2m telematics black boxes in cars across the UK, but has since been scaled back to a far more limited project.
Quindell has faced persistent questions over the way it books revenues and its financial forecasts, which it has tried to rebut using a variety of mediums including fake twitter accounts being run by two Canadian based social media companies. Redleaf Polhill, the company’s longstanding communications adviser, has also resigned from the company’s account. Quindell’s public relations is now headed by Bell Pottinger, the firm chaired by former Tory spin-doctor Lord Bell.
Last week, a fresh row erupted when the company announced that Terry, Scott and Moorse were adding to their shareholdings in Quindell. In fact they’d sold millions of pounds worth of stock at a huge discount.
It subsequently transpired that the trio had received £8.8m from Equities First Holding, an American firm, and had pledged Quindell shares as collateral which were in fact sold directly into the market.
On Monday, Quindell announced that Canaccord Genuity had resigned as its joint corporate broker almost a month ago, which one banker said was the result of a difference of opinion between the two. What this then highlighted was that the Director buys which turned out to be sells were insider trades. They’d been off-loading Quindell stock while having price sensitive information i.e. knowing their broker had resigned and it hadn’t been declared to the market.
Despite the company’s ongoing reputational problems, people close to Quindell (Morons)continue to insist that its underlying business has solid prospects, and that the resolution of its governance challenges should prompt an upward rerating of its value on the stock market.
A Quindell spokesman declined to comment to Sky news, while none of the company’s board members could be reached on Monday night and all emails and telephone calls to the Company from this blog went unanaswered. The question is now was this the price that the Cenkos Nomad extracted for its continued support? Rumours reached BMD that Cenkos had resigned or was close to resigning today. Our requests for an explanation went unanswered. Here’s another one; is there a Serious Fraud Office investigation on-going?
Viva
Dan
