UK 22:12 Wednesday, 23 September 2026
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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.
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.
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Comments
Chris Clark
The most important thing about any banking payments service is trust. I sold all my shares in Optimal Payments on Friday afternoon when the stop loss was tripped, and I could not find anything out there to say why the plummet had taken place.
Why on earth didn’t Mr Leonoff just go and get a mortgage?
If the FCA does indeed go ahead with the Quindell investigation, who knows what is going to come out about Equities First, and how it might affect Optimal.
This really is a trust issue about a fine company.
Sweet Karolina
They should also say the full terms of the contract are on our website and provide a link.
“Mr Leonoff pays interest of 3% on a quarterly basis to EFH on the Loan” has been misinterpreted by some as 3% a quarter and therefore 12%, so your RNS should have been clearer still “Interest is charged at 3% annually and is paid quarterly”
The terms of default are important as a 3 day trading halt represents a default in other EFH contracts. Only by people being able to see the full terms of the contract actually signed by Joel can shareholders and prospective shareholders decide if Joel has just been a bit of a silly billy or if there is more to it.
There should also be a personal statement from Joel at the bottom of the RNS where he personally apologises and explains his actions.
MariSabStar
Some of these companies have disclosed transparently all these matters. The assumption that EFH does sell shares is wrong and biased. When the loan expires, EFH will have to hand back the shares (assuming nobody defaults as base case). These companies could be worth much more or go bust, but the point is that EFH will have to hedge both upside and downside risk. By only paying 75% of the principal translates in EFH actually having more upside that downside risks.
You should think.
Directors are effectively reducing their downside exposure but they are keeping the upside, at the cost of paying the interest on the loan. The base case is that nobody defaults, and directors simply didn’t want to sell the shares but needed cash. In the majority of these cases directors would have been easily able to sell on the market without raising any concern among its investors for whey less than a 25% discount to market prices. If you think your stock will go up, you will happily pay a small interest but remain invested.
I don’t personally like these arrangements but you are making a lot of noise for nothing
Phil
MariSabStar
I know what has made a noise, the OPAY share price as it landed and bounced when the gutter. If there is nothing wrong then why did the share price fall.
They do this because they think can can get away with it. A qualified boundary or a negotiated one, is no boundary at all. If you are invested in this share, you are invested in a company where a board member tells lies.
Had you known when you bought this share this was going to happen or with any other share that has done this, would you still have bought the shares. If the answer is yes, well then keep the shares. If the answer is no, then the shares are a sell
MariSabStar
Exactly in case you are mentioning, I don’t really see any lie. Maybe you should read all the disclosure.
I would agree with you though, as some of the other companies have been misleading
Sweet Karolina
Marisabstar,
Have you read the actual Joel contract signed? The disclosure so far does not match the terms of other EFH contracts that are in the public domain, but clearly you have seen the contract and can confirm it is very different from the norm and therefore the disclosure is full and accurate.
If you have not read the actual contract, may I suggest you do a bit more research into what EFH has done in other cases. Then maybe you will want much fuller disclosure including the full contract to be put on the company website so you can check for yourself whether or not you have been lied to / misled.
A lot of people, myself included, have a golden rule to get out of any company that is deliberately misleading the market – this golden rule has saved me from losing a fortune – not just on AIM shares either. When our biggest banks were caught lying to everyone, I took my losses straight away and as a result I minimised them and had more money back, which I could invest in other sectors which were not lying to the market. To this day I have never invested in another bank.
Don
joel Leonoff loaned EFH 1.5mn shares at £2. 66 per share and received £4 mn.
Joel Leonoff next week. Returns the £4mn loan asks for his 1.5mn shares back, if EFH have sold them, they will have to go into the market and pay £3.20 per share and that is after a 22% drop. Surely Joel Leonoff has won out the deal, or am I missing something.
nigel somerville
DON – yes, you are!
Early repayment is not permitted.
The prob here is that OPAY has not been straight in its (way) after-hours RNS on Friday – they had all day to work out how to say ‘er, we got that wrong, here is the correct position’. The Nomad has had since Aprl Fools day to work out that the market was not fully up to speed. Now we are told that the RNS of 1 April was correct (ie no sale, hence dir interests unaffected) , but that that Mr Leonoff has transferred legal title and voting rights. Is that a position you would care to defend? Me neither – ‘nuff said!