Magnolia Petroleum (#MAGP) – AIM cancellation, good riddance
- 2018-07-01 23:54:43
UK 15:40 Monday, 26 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Set to delist from AIM, drowning in debt, burning cash, run by the poltroon Rita Whittingham with her love of a bloated pay cheque for herself and family members, Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP) was already the laughing stock of the AIM Casino. But today it took its incompetence to a new level. At 1.43 PM it announced...
I have repeatedly warned against investing in Gavin Burnell of Globo infamy creation Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP). Drowning in debt, burning cash and paying vast sums to CEO Rita Whittingham and her ghastly relatives on the payroll this is a dog. Today the company says that it is going to try and sell some of its (crap) assets and to save £100,000 it will delist from AIM. It could save far more by firing its deadwood staff. The shares have plunged 65% and are now just 0.6p to sell. But you should sell. SP Angel guru, the City's No 1 oil analyst Zac "The Knife" Phillips sums up this farce perfectly.
I was never taken in by Rita Whittingham's supposedly game changing deal for Magnolia (MAGP) with Western Energy Development. I saw it as nothing more than a way of creating a 29.9% shareholder who would save her miserable skin at an EGM called to oust her after she had stuck her talentless family on the payroll as she mismanaged the company to death. Some were more charitable, such as the City's No 1 oil analyst Zac "the Knife" Phillips of SP Angel, but Zac has seen the light and today sticks the boot in with the shares at 4.65p (post consolidation) and thus still firmly in the minus 99% club. The Knife opines:
Lifestyle company Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP) has started the ramp ahead of its next bailout placing with news of a share consolidation. It may fool some fools but not the City's No 1 oil analyst, Zac "the Knife" Phillips of SP Angel who is at his waspish best and opines:
As we saw earlier as I relayed the sordid take of Rita, her brother and Belle Trace, not so lovely Riita Whittington, the shamed and embattled CEO at Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP) entered a service contract with her employer on 11 November 2011. On 2nd June 2017 the company received a GM request to, inter alia, fire Rita. So what to do?
At a number of levels this is critical and adds to the, already compelling, case for diching Rita Whittington at the forthcoming Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP) GM. Putting family on the payroll is bad enough, operational failure & misleading statement after misleading statement are clear but this is sordid.
Less than lovely Rita Whittingham is doing her utmost to cling onto the gravy train for her and her relatives which is Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP). You will remember that there are moves to oust the proven failure and install one director from Nostra Terra (NTOG), Evan Ainsworth, and an independent director, Zac "The Knife" Phillips, the City's No 1 oil analyst. This would not be a change of control as Rita asserts since The Knife is independent, but a much needed boardroom clearout. Now to the defence document which is worthy of Jeffrey Archer. It is just low grade fiction.
Earlier today i showed how Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP) has become a gravy train not just for CEO, not so lovely Rita Whittingham, but for her extended family as well. But when the operations are not generating cash how to fund the gravy train? Shimples: pump the stock with misleading RNS statements and do a discounted placing. Rinse and repeat. Want an example (for there are many)? Here goes.
Earlier today I suggested that less than lovely Rita Whittingham ( remuneration $245,438 in 2015 and $303,737 in 2014) would almost certainly be ousted at the forthcoming GM - the maths look grim for her as I explained HERE. But if you were still wavering, did you know about her family on the payroll? Oh yes, this is shocking.
And so the battle lines are drawn at Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP), the dash guzzling worthless AIM POS founded by Gavin Burnell of Globo infamy. On the one hand there is an overpaid incumbent board led by less than lovely Rita Whittingham and backed by an overpaid army of crony capitalist advisers. On the other side are Even Ainsworth from Nostra Terra (NTOG) and Zac "The Knife" Philips, the City's top oil analyst. Magnolia has accepted that a GM request to outs less than lovely Rita and appoint Ainsorth and The Knife is valid. So what is the voting maths?
It really does not make any difference who is steering the Titanic once its hit the iceberg. Its going down. Actually that is a poor image for Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP) - think of a rubber dinghy holed in multiple places and weighed down with a crew who are both heavy - thanks to their grotesque pay over many years - and inept. I am not sure what good it would do firing Rita Whittingham and colleagues as this company will never generate a cent in free cashflow and its balance sheet is a wreck. However...
Inspector Clouseau or the Keystone Cops could work out the patterns of the great Magnolia Petroleum (MAGP) investor muggings. It's simple: CEO lovely Rita works out that Magnolia is almost out of cash. So she puts out a ramptastic press releases puffing up some meaningless and worthless garbage. Savants from the LSE asylum buy a few shares, the stock goes up and, whichever spiv broker is in-situ at the time, gets a discounted placing away. Six months later...rinse and repeat. And thus yesterday Magnolia issued an operations update. Great. Ramptastic.
