ROBERT BONNIER was catapulted to fame in the technology boom of the late 1990s. His online directories business Scoot.com came within a whisker of entry to the FTSE 100.
Scoot was valued at more than £3 billion and the personal shareholding of Mr Bonnier, who was still in his twenties, was briefly worth £130 million, before Scoot, like most dot-coms, imploded, its demise hastened by an alleged dirty tricks campaign.
Mr Bonnier went on to back or stalk a number of listed businesses, most notably the video games company SCi and the serviced offices group Regus. It was his stakebuilding in Regus in late 2002 that stirred up widespread takeover speculation and attracted the attention of regulators.
The Financial Services Authority, fining him £290,000 in 2004, then a record personal fine, found that he had misled the stock market 12 times in the space of a seven-week period.
He had given outside investors the impression that he was stake-building in Regus, when in fact he was selling down his holding, it ruled. When he claimed to be a beneficial holder of 15 per cent of Regus and to be exploring a possible bid, his holding was in fact “negligible”, the FSA said.
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Amid the Regus takeover froth, he closed out his positions, making a £643,225 profit.
Mr Bonnier, who was censured by the Takeover Panel, said that he had no intention to mislead the market. His positions were taken in contracts for difference. Had the rules for CFD disclosure then been in place, his disclosures would have been correct.