I suspect that if BCS and its silver donut cohorts are foolish enough to let this go to the enforcement stage (and given that we're talking about thousands of small shareholders now that the promoters have baled out, it will be Mum & Dad investors vs Gordon Gekko in the media) the consequences will be disastrous and in the view of legal eagles with whom I've spoken, the outcome by no means as certain as they assume. Post float, the management of BCS made repeated statements that the share price drop was preposterous in view of the yield, repeatedly quoting the first year return figures involved and assuring that the pre-operation dividends were fully funded and therefore, by implication, certain to be paid. To my mind, BCS have screwed up big time in using the excuse of naive shareholders being unable to meet the second call to not only delay the dividend (understandable though still dubious as they should have forseen this) but to effectively cancel it as well (the insulting residual figure to be paid is nil in all but form). In my opininion, they have left themselves wide open on this one. If they didn't want thousands of naive & amateur shareholders picking up these time bomb shares from the retreating institutions post float, why make the repeated public statements about the wonderful forthcoming divi & its certainty? Why were they not instead issuing reminders about the second instalment and mentioning the uncertainty of the dividend. Indeed, just keeping quiet would have been a more honest policy. In summary, BCS had better come up with a plan somewhat better than suing those whom it encouraged to buy, both pre & post float, or the lawyers will get rich and the chances of the donuts and all their mates gouging money from any future float in Oz will vaporize in the stink.
BCS Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
