There's good and bad when the Mercer Global Opportunity Fund...

There's good and bad when the Mercer Global Opportunity Fund gets involved. It is a buyout fund and its aim is to buy assets cheap and sell them high. The good news is that Mercer provides IBX with the cash to survive and sees underlying value in the IBX assets as I do in MRX. The bad news for shareholders in my view is that they are betting against current IBX strategy and management.

When they enter substantially through a sizable convertible note play rather than through equity they are in effect buying a first right of refusal for the assets.

It usually plays something out like this: Once the funds are exhausted and if the firm continues to under perform then they get the assets for the cost of the notes on the likelihood that there will be no alternative buyer for the assets under receivership who will be willing to pay a price greater than the face value of the notes. If the firm performs sufficiently just to survive and is able to raise capital again then they'll want to be paid out, and should the firm excel then and only then will they convert the notes.

The fate of IBX is now truly in the hands of management. What they achieve or fail to achieve in the next 12 months will be definitive. Such is in the discipline of debt capital.

Good luck everyone.