Refer pdf pg 67 of the UMS prospectus.
"An entity associated with Philip Cornish has a call option to acquire 2,801,850 shares in UCMS group at a strike price of $1.00 for a period of two years, (namely interests associated with the Dawes group and the Friend group). One third of these options lapse if not exercised by August 2007."
Cornish took up the expiring options prior to August 07, giving Cornish Investments 1.55m shares on 14 August. However, in the annual report, Cornish Investments are listed as only holding 342k shares - perhaps the rest were held through nominee as on the 22 Feb, he declared 1.72m shares and appears to have continued buying since.
Adrian Friend is a director of the company. Interestingly, he himself has been acquiring a handful of late.
Meanwhile, Cornish's acquisitions appear not to have come via his call options, but at lower priced, on-market trades.
Dawes group are associated with Martin Dawes telecommunications whose operations were acquired by UCMS. One non-exec director of UCMS, Dewi Thomas, is also M.D. of Martin Dawes Systems which remains as a separate entity http://www.martindawessystems.com/ . Dawes Netherland Holdings held over 41% of shares in UMS at time of listing (22.6m shares). Martin Dawes himself held 1.0m shares in UMS, with other Dawes surnames holding a further .5m shares.
Separately again is UCMS Group EMEA. http://www.ucmsgroup.eu/
They seem to share a logo and a history with UMS, but board are quite different other than I recall finding a link to CEO/director, Andreas Kemi - I think from memory he was listed on the UMS site as a major shareholder and clearly had some role, but I can't find the link any more. Some time ago, I wrote to UMS asking for an explanation of the links between UMS, UCMS Group EMEA and Martin Dawes, but have received no response.
While there are things to like about UMS, these types of unclear, related party interests are not usually a good sign. I am cautious as to their reasons for listing also. I thought I'd read somewhere that it was to provide liquidity for existing investors to manage their holdings, but perhaps I got that wrong as I can't find a reference for it.
UMS
ucms group ltd
