UK 22:12 Wednesday, 23 September 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.
Today, Optimal payments dished out an upbeat Trading Statement. I’m sure the company is doing just fine, but we have been asking questions about the Equities First Holdings (EFH) deal entered into by its CEO. And buried in the statement came this nugget from CEO Mr Joel Leonoff:
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
LondonBhoy
Flogging a dead horse now, lads. This has been clarified as much as it needs to be and great work on the investigative journalism.
Leven
Excellent work all round. Even more shocking than all the exposes is the fact that, with all due respect, a private investor website has been the one to uncover all of this. Once again the city, auditors, lawyers, advisers, regulators, boards were all asleep at the wheel (or worse in the trough)…lets hope you get some proper results, but I won’t be holding my breath on it.
Pete
Not totally convinced the company is doing ‘fine’. Try googling ‘neteller review’ – not a pretty sight. Also, if they are making so much money, how come the income tax at the interims was so low?
Paul Farrell
So you guys by your own admission identify ‘shorting opportunities’. And of course such opportunities can be manufactured by digging up old news and putting a negative spin on it in order to frighten the horses, more easily done with AIM stocks. Well done guys, I don’t suppose any of you bought Optimal when it was down 20% on Friday?
nigel somerville
PAUL – read the declaration! I have never taken any position in this company. These articles on OPAY came about from research on other stocks doing the same EFH deal. I thought it wrong as I didn’t feel that the market was adequately aware of what was going on. You may have noticed that with some of the other companies, rather more has been dragged out of them. OPAY issued two (still incomplete, in my view, clarifications)
Note also the points raised about ‘contractual obligation’ (wrong) to pay money back and ‘intention’ to do so. Now look at what RobTerry told us in today’s RNS from QPP. He’s decided that it makes no economic sense to to stay in his contract with EFH and is walking away from it.
Who still thinks that these ‘obligations’ and ‘intentions’ are worth anything? Would you put your house on it?
Londonbhoy
Nigel, firstly, thanks for printing my comment.
My point here is that within these transactions there are crooked ones and there are those you can understand may have been misled by the their financial adviser.
Take QPP where the CEO has a shady history and has a sinking ship with convoluted revenue streams that he is trying to bail out of. For goodness sake, he didn’t even declare that a NOMAD had resigned until he’d punted a chunk of his shares! Now, that warrants hounding like you guys have done.
Then there is Leonoff with a clean history, as far as I know, running a well run business with transparent revenue streams and disclosures. He has admitted two very important things due to your investigation:
1) He intends to repay the loan (and why wouldn’t he when if he receives shares worth 1GBP more than he pawned them for)
2) He entered into the agreement outside of a close period
One further item to note is that if OPAY had released disastrous results at that time I would have thought something nefarious was going on but the results and the trading update are actually very good.
All said and done, I believe we are now hounding the CEO for his foolishness and one good thing to come out of all this is that they won’t dare do this again! For that reason I have added to my long position yesterday.