Smart Work

A lot of people will bail on the cap raising, which may well present an opportunity for certain parties to gain a >50% controlling interest.  I guess it's an average-down strategy.  Why buy all of it at $3.40, when you can do two accelerated cap raisings that the other shareholders have to scramble to try and meet, so you pick up their shortfall at a much more attractive price and dilute them out of the game.  These guys are smart.  Full marks to them for getting rid of all the growth-for-growth’s-sake junkies from the old Board.  A sound foot forward.  Not sure though if they cleaned out all the spin doctors from the accounting department and the culture of ‘pulling accounting levers’ to give whatever numbers management wanted.  Those guys were continually jerking around the levers to the point they simply didn’t know what was going on.  And don’t get me going on backlog.  Ask anyone in the consulting industry who is prepared to be candid: most of its seat-of-pants bunkum.  I guess that is why it is such a popular metric.  Much more fun than boring things like profitability.  I suspect too there are still a few more skeletons in the cupboard, and some lingering remains of the old system that encouraged lower tier managers to put on heavily rose-tinted glasses when reporting upwards.  Will the minority shareholders ever get the returns they hope for?  Not if they’re squeezed out…