I say this is David Beckham’s company, just to remind you that Becks owns less than 5% having put in £250,000 at a fraction of the 8p IPO price just over a year ago. In return for promoting this company’s products Becks will trouser a guaranteed c£15 million over five years.  Today Guild (GILD) made a shocking admission but showing it does not give a FF about market rules today saw a shocking admission but not the full story. 

Darktrace (DARK) floated on May 4 at 250p. Great play was made in the lengthy prospectus of how stacks of existing shareholders were locked in, legally bound to hold their shares for 6 or 12 months. Except this is all meaningless gibberish.

In May of this year, I put it to Mr Neil Thapar, the PR supremo of Cellular Goods (CBX), that John Story was selling some of his 15 million shares in the joke David Beckham pot play, even though he was a lock-in not set to expire until 26 August this year. Thapar pooh poohed me. Today his company fesses that Story has indeed breached the prospectus lock-in.

This is a simple enough question for Cellular Goods (CBX), the Standard Listed pot company backed by David Beckham in a shoddy IPO on 26 February which we exposed HERE. The shares zoomed to 22p in early trades from a 5p IPO but have since rolled back to 7.6p to sell suggesting that many BB punters have been royally shafted by the inaccurate media hype but also that some pre IPO investors who paid a fraction of the IPO price may have been dumping.

Quite honestly what is the point of announcing a lock in arrangement when across London’s junior markets folks either ignore them completely or sell a big line and then get everyone to agree that the lock in now only applies to the remaining shares? Why not be honest and say that what is in effect is an Orderly Market Arrangement except when folks just dump with no sanction which is a disorderly market arrangement?

Yesterday it was Skinbiotherapeutics (SBTX) which allowed Optibiotix (OPTI) to dump shares less than six months after announcing a firm lock in agreement lasting 12 months. Today it is Powerhouse Energy (PHE) showing that these announcements are utterly meaningless and investors cannot rely on them at all.

As Tom Winnifrith pointed out on today’s Bearcast, there seems to be no value in contractual arrangements any more. Shares subject to a lock-in? No problem, we’ll sell them anyway. And that brings me to K3 Capital Group (K3C). Like Tom, I have no idea what the company does and frankly nor do I care. But I do wonder whether things are going quite so well at the company in the light of this morning’s news. It wasn’t the sales which concerned me (although that was bad enough), it was what came with them.

On today's bearcast I look at K3 Capital Group (K3C) and ask when is a legally binding lock in not a lock in? If I hear another fat cat CEO say that he is dumping shares "in response to institutional demand" I think I shall scream. I have some observations about and (unanswered) questions for BNN (BNN) and its - suspended - CEO Darren Mercer. I have some observations about the democracy hating Professor Moriaty of Conroy Gold & Natural Resources (CGNR) and then a few observations from Paul Scott and myself about Boohoo (BOO).