Craft beer. Craft fairs. Aircraft. People have a vague idea what they’re all about. But IP Group, the self-styled “practitioners of venture craft”? What sort of derring-do is that?
Nothing less, apparently, than “a mission to evolve great ideas” — the type dreamt up in university labs. And what, you ask, is IP’s greatest idea lately? Well, pretending it’s made an “improved offer” for rival Touchstone Innovations — and getting Imperial College to fall for it.
It’s a bit of a convoluted tale. IP happens to be majority-owned by three investors: Neil Woodford’s eponymous investment outfit, his old shop Invesco and the hedgies from Lansdowne. Better still, at least for IP, the trio own 74 per cent of Touchstone. So what better than them all clubbing together to strong-arm Touchstone into a nice low-ball, all-share takeover?
That’s precisely the caper IP produced in May with a putative offer valuing Touchstone at 307p a share, or £495 million. No matter that it was blatantly opportunistic, barely above a two-year share-price low. Or that Touchstone’s controlling shareholders couldn’t care less, since what they lose on Touchstone they gain on IP. Indeed, just about the only positive was the 5 per cent premium to Touchstone’s then net asset value of 293p a share.
Not for long. By the time the real offer arrived in June, it was worth just 289p a share — the result of IP’s falling share price. That looked meaner still after Touchstone’s trading update last week raising its NAV to 312p.
Advertisement
True, IP had no obligation to bump its offer. It already has 74 per cent of Touchstone shares in the bag. And Touchstone investors are getting 34 per cent of the enlarged group, so a sort of share in the upside. Yet IP still wanted one investor onside: Imperial College, one of Touchstone’s founders, with 15.3 per cent. Its scientists have provided some of the ideas it turns into start-up companies.
Even so, it’s a bit rich to claim it’s just made an “improved” bid. Yes, IP has marginally increased the exchange ratio. But, based on last night’s closing share price of 138½p, IP’s latest offer values Touchstone at a same-again 307p — no better than its initial proposal and now below Touchstone’s NAV. Touchstone shares rose 6 per cent to 291p.
Still, it was enough to persuade Imperial to roll over, burbling how it “appreciate[s] the increased value for Touchstone’s shareholders”. Not bad for an offer that’s really worse than May’s. Call it venture craft, if you want. Crafty, more like.
Alarm bells
Lucky the Office for National Statistics has just changed the rules. Imagine the carnage if it hadn’t stopped pre-releasing official economic data to the testosterone-fuelled “donkeys” and “ferrets in a sack” masquerading as government ministers. The pound would have absolutely tanked. As it was, it just had a wobble moments before the big economic set-piece of the day: June’s inflation figures.
Having hit $1.3126 half an hour before the data was released, its punchiest since 2016, sterling fell half a cent minutes before the big news: that consumer prices rose just 2.6 per cent last month, down from May’s four-year high of 2.9 per cent and a fair bit less than the market had expected. It then swiftly slipped almost half a cent more once the inflation figures were out. “Worrying” stuff. Or so said David Woolcock from ACI UK, the financial markets association.
Advertisement
So, was there a leak anyway from the ONS’s HQ in Wales, less than three weeks after the stats office clampdown? A Newport mole, perhaps, still feeding the donkeys and ferrets. Or is the explanation for the pound’s gyrations more prosaic? That it got a bit ahead of itself on talk of worse-than-forecast inflation and had already gone into reverse before the data came out? Then it fell again once everyone could see the figures for what they were: all the ammo the Bank of England needs to keep interest rates on hold after that thrilling 5-3 split vote. So, maybe not much more exciting than the next rates decision.
Golden goodbye
And then there was one: Andrey Maruta. Who he? The sole survivor of the old board at goldminer Petropavlovsk.
The finance chief, in the job since 2006, is still clinging on: something that cannot be said for its co-founder chief executive, Pavel Maslovskiy. He’s just decided “the time has come to hand over the leadership” — nothing to do, of course, with having witnessed last month’s ousting of co-founder Peter Hambro and the three independent non-execs. And all at the hands of Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and his comrades in arms — fellow agitators M&G and Sothic Capital.
Four new non-execs are now aboard, including chairman Ian Ashby. And the miner’s just got an acting chief executive in Sergey Ermolenko, who was already in the business. The rebels claim to be improving “corporate governance”. Bit hard to tell, as yet.
Failed fitness test
Fitbug was never going to do as the moniker for a £2 million “digital wellness” company — especially one targeting a $43 billion market. So no wonder its boss Anna Gudmundson decided, in April, to change the corporate name.
Advertisement
She opted for Kin, an obvious choice, with the company trading as the even shapelier Kin Wellness. And now look what’s happened. Lender Belastock Capital has pulled out of a £1.13 million fundraiser after Kin breached one of the terms: that its shares wouldn’t fall below 0.1p five days running. And now they’ve been suspended.
Not very ’Kin Well at all.
