I follow up on yesterday’s bearcast on Wandisco (WAND) and the deal done by CEO Dave Richards with the hoods at Equities First Holdings (EFH). Dave called me up. I explain why he is naive not dishonest but why he needs to grill his advisers. Was there a brown envelope? Who penned the RNS which now looks even more dishonest with what I tell you today? Dave should shoot and/or his advisers as they have landed him in the reputational soup.  I then look at today’s latest  disgusting revelations on the Charlie Wood Hydrogen and Helium SPAC spoof IPOs, at the utter naivety of Aquis and I have advise for certain City folk on what they should do as the regulator has failed. Liam, Fungai and he who shall not be named you know what to do. I look at Bowleven (BLVN) and also at Caracal Gold (GCAT) asking who is selling?  

You may remember the Equities First Holdings (EFH) scandal which we did so much to expose? Fine chaps like the fraudster Rob Terry of Quindell (QPP) would take out a loan at a big discount to the value of shares pledged. They did not care as they knew the shares were way overvalued. The “lender,” EFH, would dump the stock at once so locking in a profit and when the shares fell a bit more the borrower would default. Easy! How to dump your entire holding in a worthless company while saying you were not. A document filed at Companies House, below, but natch not admitted to via RNS suggests the CEO of the fraud Supply@ME Capital Alessandro Zamboni has (again) been reading the Rob Terry playbook.

I have dropped a note to our good friends the Oxymorons and Chocolate Teapots, of AIM Regulation and the FCA respectively, with regard to AIM-listed IQE (IQE) head honcho Dr Drew Nelson and his recent dealings with Equities First Holdings. It seems to me to be a certainty that he has not come clean over his loan that isn’t a loan, under which he is “obligated” to repurchase the shares he sold yet these deals are non-recourse (so he’s not “obligated” at all), where we were told he had cash put aside to meet margin calls but settled one with more shares, and where his margin call appears to have been reported well after the fact – or it was not the first – when, if I understand the rules correctly, all margin call matters and any other developments in relation to his EFH loan which isn’t a loan should be reported to the market within a few days.

We have heard nothing more from AIM-listed IQE over when head honcho Dr Drew Nelson received the dreaded margin call from Equities First Holdings (EFH) in relation to his non-recourse sale-and-repurchase deal involving (now) over 12 million shares. Yet as I noted on Monday, it seems pretty clear that we have not been told the whole truth and I shall be writing to AIM Regulation on that matter later today. But looking back, it seems there is something else which doesn’t quite match what we were told.

AIM-listed IQE (IQE) boss Drew Nelson’s first deal with US loan-sharks Equities First Holdings (EFH), under which his non-recourse sale and repurchase agreement which was originally misrepresented, ended on a happy note and all ended well. So well that he did another deal last year. Unfortunatley, that seems to have become a little unstuck as today we learn that Dr Nelson was on the receiving end of a margin call. But when?

We have not heard from Equities First Holdings (EFH) for a while, but regular ShareProphets readers may remember the scandal which emerged five years ago whereby directors of AIM companies announced they were buying shares when, if fact, they were selling vast numbers of them to EFH with the right, but not the obligation, to buy them back. Such fine enterprises as Rob Terry fraud Quindell (QPP – now Watchstone), Igas (IGAS, under Andrew “piggy” Austin), Cloudbuy (CBUY), Angle (AGL), Optimal Payments (OPP) and, of course, IQE (IQE) were all dragged in. Well now Drew Nelson, CEO of IQE has done another deal with EFH – and the announcement stinks. Has the company learned nothing from last time, when all of the above companies had to restate and restate again?

After recent revelations here the position of Angus Energy (ANGS) founder and chairman Jonathan Tidswell-Pretorious  was untenable and today he has “been resigned” from the board with immediate effect. But Tidswell will remain as a non- Board Operations Director, responsible for progressing all the Company's oil & gas operations while some oafish NED becomes chairman, in name at least.  That is what the company says…

It has been a while, but it seems that the hoods from Equities First Holdings LLC are back once again: AIM-listed Avingtrans (AVG) announced on Tuesday that one of its NEDs, Mr Ewan Lloyd-Baker, is handing over 300,000 shares for a two year loan. The text of the RNS (just as with Igas, Cloudbuy, IQE, Quindell, Optimal Payments (as was) and Angle) again fails to point out that from Mr Lloyd-Baker’s point of view the deal is non-recourse so he can throw in the towel at any time if things go wrong.

Yesterday AIM-listed Octagonal (OCT) released a Director’s Dealings RNS. Nothing unusual about that, you might think, but the text was announcing that CEO John Gunn was taking a loan secured against his shares in the company. Is he doing an Equities First type of deal?

It is almost three years since the Equities First Holdings story hit the headlines with the deal signed up with by Rob Terry et al at what was then called Quindell – now Watchstone (WTG) – whereby the sale of shares via a non-recourse sell and buyback deal was dressed up as a director share purchase.

I’ve been saying for an age that AIM-listed Igas Energy (IGAS) was a sell and this morning the denoument has arrived. In the wake of previous boss Andrew “Piggy” Austin and his dealings with Equities First, and his legacy to the new board of a massively overindebted company, this morning came the announcement that a restructuring is being attempted at 4.5p per share. I fear that poor Tom Winnifrth senior may be further deprived of that bottle of Ouzo. Actually, if the new board manages to pull this off I will take my hat off to it but there are some hurdles to overcome first.

AIM-listed Servision (SEV) has some questions to answer. I hope it is currently answering them to its Nomad Allenby Capital and that we will have a statement shortly. Having announced a funding deal with US-based Cascade (which has nothing to do with Bill Gates) which seemed way too good to be true – at over 400% of the previously prevailing share price – backed by a personal guarantee from chairman and CEO Gidon Tahan, the nature of that guarantee became rather murky on Friday when it emerged after-hours that he had put up his entire shareholding as security. On what terms?

Tom Winnifrith has already driven a coach and horses through the deal announced on Wednesday whereby an obscure US-based outfit has apparently agreed to throw $2 million (and up to a further $4 million) into AIM-listed Servision (SEV) at a massive premium to the share price previous to the announcement. But a no-one-is-watching o’clock RNS last night leaves me wondering whether the whole thing is so appallingly dressed up as to render the original RNS a gross misrepresentation of the truth.

It was good to see AIM-listed med-tech play Angle (AGL) announce that its CEO, Mr Andrew Newland, had successfully seen his sale-and-repurchase deal with Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH) mature at the end of its term, and that the 1.35 million shares involved were safely back in his mitts. Shareholders in Angle will welcome this – but so, it seems, does EFH. So pleased, in fact, that EFH itself released an RNS in celebration.

Some good news, I think, for shareholders in AIM-listed medical technology firm Angle (AGL) which one might sense will be greeted with the same relief as the moment when an unwelcome guest leaves the house.

Equities First Holdings is back. You remember those chaps who "borrowed" shares from folks like Andrew Austin at IGAS, fraudster Rob Terry at Quindell (QPP) and Ronald Duncan at Cloudbuy (CBUY). Shares in all three companies crashed and all defaulted on the loans so completing what was in effect a hidden share sale. After almost two years the disgraced shysters of EFH are back and this time it is Edi Truell of Tungsten (TUNG) infamy who is dumping shares but wants to hide the fact.

I’ve been a bear of Igas Energy (IGAS) ever since previous CEO Andrew “piggy” Austin’s shady dealings with Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH) when he walked away with millions in cash whilst still being able to claim that his interests in the shares were unchanged by the transaction. It ran rings around the disclosure rules. Ever since he walked (or, more likely, was pushed) it has been clear that he left the company drowning in debt and sitting on a ticking time-bomb. Yesterday came a surprise move, but one which could, perhaps, spell the end of the road for equity holders. Quite why the shares spiked (albeit temporarily) on the news is a mystery.

Thursday afternoon saw a packed RNS released by beleaguered AIM-listed Cloudbuy (CBUY) detailing all manner of news – far too much to cover in one article. I suppose that you can’t quite describe 3.32pm as no-one-is-watching o’clock, although it was less than an hour before the city knocked off for the Easter recess and one might imagine that most were packing their bags by then. Let’s start with the options.

Fully listed Urban and Civic (UANC) has announced a series of board changes. It looks like a pretty comprehensive round of musical chairs and from a corporate governance point of view it is good to see the role of CEO and Chairman being split. But a spot of PR spin caught my eye which sticks in the craw, as the shadow of Mr Robert Adair’s dealings with Equities First Holdings LLC is cast.

Andrew “piggy” Austin, the former CEO of AIM-listed Igas (IGAS) and head honcho of newly listed RockRose Energy (RRE) has submitted an interesting TR-1 which was released by Igas yesterday afternoon. It raises a number of questions, not least of which is whether it was erroneous. Surely the Equities First Holdings LLP (EFH) saga is not taking yet another twist, is it? 

A visit to the quack today was not good news but at least the woes of English rugby and LGO Energy (LGO) are there to cheer me up. in this podcast I discuss Alexander Mining (AXM), Cloudbuy (CBUY), the hoods at Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH), Daniel Stewart (DAN), Imaginatik (IMTK), Wandisco (WAND), Mirada (MIRA), Range Resources (RRL), tech stocks vs mining stocks, Amanda Van Dyke and, to end, I can't resist a cheap joke about the rugby.

Our understanding of the small print of the ‘loan’ packages between AIM company directors and Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH) is that there are clauses which would trigger a default in certain circumstances. These include non-payment of interest, failing to meet margin call payments and a suspension of trading for more than three days of the stock which has been handed over to EFH. AIM-listed Cloudbuy (CBUY) has been suspended since last Thursday, when the (now ex-) Nomad resigned with immediate effect. The suspension has just entered day four.

A difficult few days, I fancy, over at Cloudbuy Towers. Last week Chairman Ronald Duncan had a margin call from Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH) which prompted an RNS stating that Mr Duncan would settle in cash. Then on Wednesday of this week came an after-hours RNS stating that the Interims had been delayed. This morning AIM-listed Cloudbuy (CBUY) finally released those interims (which were not all that pretty) and then promptly followed up with the announcement that the Nomad had quit with immediate effect. Consequently the shares are now suspended. This has implications for Mr Duncan’s EFH package. It is hard to know where to start!

Last year Ronald Duncan, Chairman of AIM-listed Cloudbuy (CBUY) did a deal involving a non-recourse sale and repurchase agreement with Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH), which was presented to the market so as to look like a loan. These deals typically have a margin call trigger written into the contract, and our understanding is that in this case the phone rings if the average closing mid-price over three days falls below 19.5p. As of yesterday’s close, that condition looks to have been met.

Last year Optimal Payments (OPAY) was forced to come (semi) clean over a loan package between its CEO, Mr Joel Leonoff, and Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH). Optimal originally told that market on 1 April 2014 that Mr Leonoff had pledged 1.5 million shares in the company as collateral for a loan of approx. £4m, but failed to mention a few details such as the non-recourse nature of the package and that EFH was free just to dump the stock into the market. This did not become clear until it was exposed on ShareProphets last autumn and resulted in a number of clarifications from Optimal, along with AIM-listed Igas (IGAS), Cloudbuy (CBUY), Quindell (QPP), IQE (IQE) and Angle (AGL). 

I covered a few cursory matters yesterday (HERE) regarding the stepping down of Andrew Austin as CEO of IGas Energy plc (IGAS) and the diabolical trading statement issued yesterday. We are told that Mr Austin will hang around to ensure a smooth transition – rather reminiscent of the situation at Coms when Dave Brieth stepped down but would hang around for the same reason. Except that in Mr Brieth’s case he was then selling shares in what appeared to be a close period, a bit of a problem but for the fact that he was no longer running the show and, indeed, we gather that he has not been on site since walking the plank. So what of Mr Austin’s holding in IGas – and his disgraceful EFH deal?

Finally, some sixteen months or so after the disgrace of Andrew ‘Piggy’ Austin’s sale of 7,500,000 shares to Equities First Holdings LLC in return for a non-recourse loan when he had been announced by RNS to be buying shares, he has been sent to the Corporate Butchers’ shop. After a period when the IGas (IGAS) share price has fallen from a peak of around 160p to the current 30p or thereabouts (having hit lows of below 20p), and the train-wreck of the deal to buy Dart Energy (at least for Dart’s shareholders) someone had to pay the price.

Noting Tom Winnifrith’s comments HERE that in the light of his revelation that Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH) had dumped the whole of the 2.25 million shares handed over by Cloudbuy Chairman Ronald Duncan in the sale-and-repurchase loan arrangement, he hoped that Cloudbuy’s shares would absolutely ‘roof it’. Well they have.

You might have thought that the Equities First Holdings LLC scandal would burn itself out, but not a bit of it. Step forward Mr Robert Adair, NED of Main Market listed Urban&Civic plc (UANC).

Enough is enough. Tom Winnifrith’s revelation that EFH has dumped the entire holding of 2.25 million shares transferred to it by Cloudbuy (CBUY) Chairman Ronald Duncan is shocking. It makes a total mockery of the disclosure requirements demanded by the FCA and AIM Regulation and as such I have today written an open letter to the heads of those two bodies, Mr Marcus Stuttard and Mr Martin Wheatley.

The latest shocking revelations from Tom Winnifrith (HERE) made it clear that EFH has indeed dumped all of the 2.25 million shares transferred to it by Cloudbuy Chairman Mr Ronald Duncan. There are serious implications for Optimal Payments (OPAY) and its forthcoming rights issue, as well as the acquisition classed as a reverse takeover announced earlier this week.

I have always rather liked Ronald Duncan of Cloudbuy (CBUY) because he has the most excellent taste in music and is also a thoroughly decent man. I am sorry he got dragged into the Equities First Holdings mess and I put that down to naiveté and a desire to purchase a nice house not malice. I am thus delighted to report some breaking news which is good news for Ronald and Cloudbuy but opens up a whole new can of worms for EFH and a few other directors.

Last year ShareProphets broke the scandal of AIM company directors taking loans from Equities First Holdings LLP (EFH) and entering into sale-and-repurchase agreements over shares in their companies as collateral. There were various conditions which would trigger a default which required either the transfer of further shares or cash to EFH, or there was the option just to walk away. Within days the first of the AIM companies (Quindell) saw former boss, the insider dealer, Mr Robert Simon Terry walk away under the non-recourse terms – he kept the money. Now a second one is on the hook.

Oh dear, a Nomad who was approached by Equities First Holdings LLC urging it to get its corporate clients to engage in its dodgy share trades has come forward and revealed that brown envelopes were involved. So which Nomad or Nomads have taken one and is this not a conflict of interest?

Having already published an open letter to IGas’ (IGAS) Nomad, Jefferies International, asking it to look into a holding of 10.25m shares registered to Bank of New York Nominees on 25 November 2014 (HERE) which exceeds 3% of the issued shares I have been doing some number crunching. The results throw up either the most incredible coincidence, or a demonstration that IGas CEO Andrew Austin has handed over 2.75m more shares to EFH than the 7.5m shares disclosed the very next day after this 10.25m share holding was registered. Here is why.

In the light of the controversy over Andrew "Piggy" Austin’s deal with Equities First Holdings LLC and the questions over margin calls, your intrepid reporter met up with Tom Winnifrith on Tuesday to have a look at the shareholder register in Bristol. If Tom thinks this demonstrates what an exciting life he must lead, mine must be even more so as I had to travel further, to Tom’s home town!  What did we find?

A year and five days ago Andrew “Piggy” Austin  announced he was buying shares in Igas (IGAS) at 135p sending the stock up to 147p. Sadly that was untrue he made a net £7 million from selling/loaning shares to dodgy Equities First Holdings LLC at 93p. Such dodgy deals always have a level at which there is a margin call. FFS the shares are now just 30.5p

Hello Share Smackers. As I write this modest little column, my IQE (IQE) shares have leapt on the day by 12%. This is jolly good because I've been ambivalent about this investment.

Today is the one year anniversary of the first dodgyEquities First Holdings LLC share deal on AIM. It was a year ago that Andrew Piggy Austin of IGAS said he was buying shares when in fact he made £7 million with his EFH loan/sale agreement. Today we will be celebrating that day all day lest Piggy forget.

 ShareProphets broke the story of the Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH) loans scandal back in November 2014. We nailed the EFH six – IGas (IGAS), Quindell (QPP), Optimal Payments (OPAY), Cloudbuy (CBUY), IQE (IQE) and Angle (AGL) for not giving adequate disclosure of the dealings of their directors with regard to deals with EFH. All those companies were in the end (and some rather more reluctantly than others) forced into clarifications. But it turns out that the FCA has also issued a clarification too!

It is a year to the day since Andrew Piggy Austin of Igas ( salary £670,000) told investors he was buying shares when in fact he was dumping a net £7 million worth in his dodgy loan deal with Equities First Holdings LLC.  In the 365 days that have followed shares in Igas have crashed from 135p to 35p. So when will Piggy get his much deserved P45?

In two previous articles HERE and HERE I have identified four material breaches of the ‘Scheme Implementation Agreement’ (SIA) under which AIM listed IGas completed its all-paper takeover of Aussie-listed Dart Energy. Each of those breaches is serious enough to call the whole deal into question. But what of the role of IGas’ Nomad, Jefferies International?

I have been looking in detail at the takeover by IGas (IGAS) of Aussie-based Dart Energy over the summer of this year - an all-paper deal which, at time of announcement, offered a substantial premium to the prevailing share price of Dart. Since the deal was first agreed by the two Boards, Igas’ share price has fallen substantially to leave former Dart shareholders nursing hefty losses. But there are skeletons in the closet:

On Friday AIM Cesspit listed Optimal Payments  (OPAY)  announced the departure of its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and director, Mr Keith Butcher  – one of just two executive directors on the board. As discussed HERE he had been selling down his holding at above the current share price earlier in the year.  The news saw the shares fall an impressive 12.9%.

Thanks to the joys of the internet we have a sample contract for those Equities First Holdings LLP (EFH) so-called loan deals. It makes fascinating reading  - you can read it HERE.Note that it is held on the USA’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) website: I think we can assume it is genuine! Given that EFH is a one product company, this contract gives us a solid basis for a model contract with directors the EFH Six (Optimal payments, IGAS, Cloudbuy, IQE, Quenron and Aengle), which we can now test against disclosures made.

Shares in IGAS (IGAS) now trade at a year low of 49.25p. IMHO they are heading a lot lower – 20p is my target as you can see HERE. But even at the current dismal level the question is “when is the margin call on CEO Andrew Austin’s Equities First Holdings LLC share sale (oops I mean loan) set to kick in?

Taking a look at Optimal Payments (OPAY) 2013 Annual Report has been an interesting experience. Having looked at the remuneration of Andrew Austin at IGas (IGAS) – which looked generous to a fault – I wondered what sort of package Mr Joel Leonoff might be on. I have thus far clocked up no less than seven different routes by which Optimal has been rewarding Mr Leonoff. Now I have no quibble with top-notch work getting suitably rewarded - don’t get me wrong. But the value of his packages does seem to me to be right up there with the best of the snouts-in-the-trough merchants. But first, a big fat porkie pie Gotcha!

With IGas (IGAS) seemingly having to issue re-clarifications every few days (and there will be more I fancy…) we turn once again to Optimal payments (OPAY_. We have already forced out two clarifications (after hours Fri 15 Nov and pre-market Mon 17 Nov buried in a trading statement). It is striking that of the six plcs caught up in the EFH scandal, three have come fairly clean – notably Angle (AGL), but Cloudbuy (CBUY) and Quindell (QPP) have revealed much. IQE (IQE) has been fairly forthcoming too. And then there are IGAS and Optimal, who are having information dragged out of them only with the greatest of reluctance. For those two companies, our rope – like their shareholders – is long and strong.

Things are hotting up for AIM Cesspit-listed IGas (IGAS) and its beleaguered CEO Andrew Austin in relation to his  ‘loan’ deal with Equities First Holdings LLC. I remind you that this is a one-product finance company, and we have read one of its loan-deal contracts held on the SEC website in the US very carefully. Thus far we have not yet seen a British one, but we think it will be largely the same. Some of the AIM companies caught up in the EFH scandal have been rather more open than others when it has come to clarifying details of the deal. And that brings us back to the issue of margin calls.

It is hat-tip time once again to Jason. He’s understandably a bit miffed  - he feels that Dart Shareholders were not given full disclosure of the true picture with IGas (IGAS) ahead of the recommended takeover of Dart in relation to the shareholding of IGas CEO Andrew Austin. He thought that Mr Austin actually HELD almost 11m shares in the company offering its own paper to buy Dart, but it seems that in fact he held fewer than 3,500,000 shares, with the rest in the form of an option. I would feel the same in his shoes. And so I thought it time to get to the truth about Mr Austin’s director interests and director holdings.

On 4 November IGas (IGAS) Ceo Andrew Austin gave a telephone interview to Proactive  Investors. You can watch that video HERE .  You know the form: IGAS pays Proactive a fee and it asks really soft questions and pretends that it is objective journalism.  In it, when asked about the share price performance, he said ‘it is depressing me’. I wonder if he had forgotten to take his dose of Prozac that day. Or was it more to do with his sale and repurchase ‘loan’ deal with Equities First Holdings LLC?

Cloudbuy (CBUY) previously announced on 27 October 2014 that Chairman Ronald Duncan was taking a loan secured against ‘up to’ 4,500,000 shares in order to fund a house move. Then on 12 Nov 2014, in the teeth of the furore in the wake of being outed by Shareprophets that this was an Equities First deal, Cloudbuy ‘clarified’ that this ‘loan’ was in fact a sale and repurchase agreement  and that Mr Duncan intended to complete the transfer of the remaining 2.25 million shares to EFH. Now Cloudbuy has this morning announced that:

I read with utter horror Wednesday’s RNS regarding Mr Austin’s Equities First Holdings LLC (EFH) ‘loan’ deal which, ahem, clarified that the previous clarification that the original RNS was all correct was in fact (cough, splutter) unclear. It was wrong. It was misleading. What a total shambles! How any CEO could survive this - and what follows - is beyond me. Gallows at the ready, then.

In yesterday’s piece HERE   I discussed IGAS and its takeover of Aussie-listed Dart Energy with regard to disclosures not given to Dart’s shareholders about IGAS CEO Andrew Austin’s EFH ‘loan’ deal as announced by RNS on 16 Jan 2014, which had stated that Mr Austin had transferred shares in the company to Equities First Holdings as security for a loan. All the other companies caught up in the EFH scandal have clarified that the deal did involve the handing over of title and voting rights to EFH (i.e. they were disposals) albeit the ‘loan’ deal contains an option to buy the shares back. But IGAS and its Nomad still refuse to concede that Mr Austin’s deal was the same. So now we come to the farm-out deal with Total and its implications, the potential ugliness of which might finally get a full disclosure of the EFH deal out of IGAS and its ostrich of a Nomad.

Hat tip to the Deputy Sheriff of AIM for spotting the strange events at Maple Energy (MPLE) a true AIM Cesspit posterboy whose hapless Nomad is - as it happens - Cenkos, the tossers who represent Quindell. Share transactions undertaken by former CEO Tony Hines have a strange Equites First Holdings LLC look to them although they may not be with EFH. In this podcast I look at the nature of those transactions, the reasons why Hines quit and the financial trainwreck that Maple is today. Maple has the smell of death about it. I therefore have seven questions for the poltroons round at Cenkos.

In January 2014, IGAS (IGAS) announced that its CEO had transferred shares in the company to Equities Frist Holdings LLC as security for a loan. We have asked several times for clarification on this because the EFH contracts we have seen all show that the transfer is of title and voting rights.

On Friday, following revelations on this website HERE, Optimal Payments (OPAY) released an RNS which was misleading regarding how its CEO had dumped shares in this fine company. We are helpful fellows and have thus started the ShareProphets Translation service in which we offer up what the RNS SHOULD have looked like.

Lest it not be forgotten, The AIM casino holds Equities First Holdings LLP (EFH) in such high regard that it not only allowed EFH to sponsor this year’s AIM Awards, but even got one of their number ( the witch Elena Clarici) to sit on the judging panel. What fine, upstanding citizens those fine fellows at EFH must be.