There has been a further announcement by the company today which stated that administrators have been appointed “by order of the court”.
The administrators are FTI Consulting LLP and they say “Our focus is to undertake an immediate assessment of the Group in order to evaluate any opportunities to realise value from the various businesses. We will also be looking to gain control of the books and records in order to be in a position to undertake a full investigation. These steps will be done in close consultation with the requisite regulatory bodies.” and “No dividends are expected to be available for shareholders.”
The shares are likely to be de-listed as soon as possible and clearly the ordinary shareholders are likely to receive nothing from the administration. Note also that shareholders are not “creditors” under UK insolvency legislation and hence will have no say in the process. The bankers to the company are likely to be able to recover something by having security over certain assets, but it is very usual in administrations to find there is nothing remaining for unsecured creditors and ordinary shareholders.
So if you know of anyone who might be interested in buying the assets of the business they should contact the administrators immediately (it is not clear if this is a pre-pack administration or not but bearing in mind the rapid timescale of these events which is unusual, probably not). If anyone has any doubt that the company does have some valuable intellectual property, they should read this Facebook note written by Globo staff: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=562662883886842. It refutes some of the claims made by Quintessential concerning the Globo products, but that might be poor consolation to shareholders who appear to have been the subject of a major fraud.
ShareSoc did organise a telephone conference call for investors last night (we now have about 150 contacts so apologies if you could not get in). Some specific actions were agreed in that meeting, the first one being to form a small committee to take matters forward.
Now although some actions may have been pre-empted by the administration, it is beginning to look quite likely that shareholders might have legal claims against the former directors, the auditors or other parties. So that is what will now be pursued.
Anyone with an interest in Globo should register on this web page: www.sharesoc.org/campaigns/globo/
Roger Lawson
Roger, I have no strong opinion one way or another, but I don’t understand how you could take that Facebook post to be strong evidence of valuable IP. To me it’s just some fairly anonymous comment. Obviously people in a development environment will feel their work is valuable, but How Valuable? £100m, £10m, £1m, £100k, £10k, not enough to cover a week’s wages, etc.
If the note is genuine, then it supports the view that the GoEnterprise product was real and not imaginary and there is surely a substantial market for such a product – for example look at the Gartner research on the market sector in which it operates. That does not of course mean that the sales reported are all genuine, or reported profits genuine. Globo’s competitors have been losing money so that’s probably more like the real situation, but that does not mean the IP is worthless – valuations of software companies can be high despite their common losses.
Roger Lawson