UK 09:56 Tuesday, 6 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Having announced a “Notice of intention to appoint Administrators” (as Tom Winnifrith reviewed HERE), its CEO having described boardroom salaries as “tiny” (see HERE) and to help with a caption contest now underway HERE, the following offers some final damning statistics on the AIM existence of Motive Television (MTV), its CEO Leonard Fertig and its Chairman Michael Pilsworth…
Already a member? Sign in
• All premium articles
• Tom Winnifrith’s Bearcast
• Access to all the entire nearly 13 year archive
• ShareProphets Daily Newsletter
Cancel any time
This area of the ShareProphets.com site is for independent financial commentary. These blogs are provided by independent authors via a common carrier platform and do not represent the opinions of ShareProphets.com. ShareProphets.com does not monitor, approve, endorse or exert editorial control over these articles and does not therefore accept responsibility for or make any warranties in connection with or recommend that you or any third party rely on such information. The information available at ShareProphets.com is for your general information and use and is not intended to address your particular requirements. In particular, the information does not constitute any form of advice or recommendation by ShareProphets.com and is not intended to be relied upon by users in making (or refraining from making) any investment decisions.
Comments
Juicin Drumroll
Can you please do a similar year by year accounting for Michael Laurier & the BoDs of Symphony Environmental (SYM)? I think you’d be surprised! Those SYM boys are perennial troughers, decade & a half long promisers of jam tomorrow getting paid £millions to destroy shareholder value.
In fact, Shareprophets needs a league table showing the pay of ALL AIM mgmt, especially the ones that lose money year after year with their share price down the shitter.
Turn up the fucking heat on all of these bastards!
MrMoto
Hear, hear for a league table. Would be a fun project for one of your writers.
Some of the salaries across AIM are outrageous. Two directors who ran a private business pulled £35k salaries with the odd divi maybe 25% of that, their turnover probably 2/3 most AIM tiddlers. An extreme case maybe, but shows the difference.
Duck and Dive
Fertig and Pilsworth did allegedly “invest” in MTV by taking part of their fat salaries in shares at some future date when they would no longer be considered insiders. According to the 16.9.2015 RNS:
“All the remaining directors have agreed to accept payment of most of their compensation for the four month period ending on 31 December 2015 in Ordinary Shares, valued at approximately £62,000, at the market price at a future date when they are not deemed to be insiders.”
And according to the 5.1.2016 RNS:
“…the Directors and senior management of Motive will continue to be compensated at the rate of half salary in cash and half in ordinary shares from January until the Company reaches monthly cash profitability.”
I assume this salary/equity debt to the directors adds up to close to the market cap at the time the priest was called. They will also count as preferential creditors and thereby be first in line for any residual cash after the fixed charge holders have been paid off (stranger things have happened at sea).
What fun it would be for the BBMs to see any/all residual cash end up in the directors’ pockets.
Drunken Sailor
D & D
The administrators’ report will be a riveting good read when it comes out. I reckon the “assets” are so worthless that secured creditors will be lucky so see as much as 10p in the £. It would not surprise me though if the administrators can’t even raise enough to cover their own fees.
I think Fertig and co have already had all the pay days they are going to get out of this one. Time to start up another one. How about an Apple approved app that lets you do your washing in your main washing machine – the downloads on that would be massive, as everyone needs to do their washing in their washing machine. It will probably take a few years to get a listing and suck in fresh mug punters, but by that time MTV will be a distant memory. We could go on the BBs for that company and warn the new mug punters about Fertig and be called lunatics with some personal vendetta (did he screw your wife or something?). No doubt he will have a new chairman to suck his cock in every annual report, or maybe Pilsworth still loves the taste of it so much he will be prepared to do it all again for his substantial, I mean tiny, remuneration package.
Duck and Dive
According to some brokers today, MTV has now filed for bankruptcy.