Mercantile Ports & Logis... Share Discussion Threads

[my retirement fund] 20/4/2024 20:01

To clarify, I mean you'd have to have an IQ below 75 and have lived in total isolation from most others in the community to have believed all carryings on and operations were quite normal here over many years its been going on

[my retirement fund] 20/4/2024 19:55

When you hear about institutional investors doing this sort of thing, you have to suspect they are getting some sort of kickback from the fraudulent operation. Based on the common sense assumptions that nobody can be ignorant and stupid otherwise.

[pj 1] 20/4/2024 19:22

Yes. They were taken to view the port from the sea in a speed boat, as it was too dangerous to view via land due to H&S concerns with construction traffic, which was bluff as nothing was happening anyway.

[mount teide] 20/4/2024 15:28

Yes - they and the Nomad Representative Stephen Keys visited Karanja Port on numerous occasions - usually just before MPL were about to raise more funds to supposedly check the accuracy of the proposed market documentation to effect the cash raise - including prior to the Shareholders Circular in 2017 to raise another £37m.

A document Industry professional friends and I described as one of AIM's Greatest ever Works of Fiction. We were proved entirely correct. Stephen Keys failed to pick up on any of its fraudulent content, preferring to act more like MPL's defence council!


M&G - Richard Penny - who moved to Crux Asset Management about 2-3 years ago after losing 99% of his circa £15m MPL IPO investment plus 98% of further placing cash in MPL.

And guess what one of Richard's first investments at Crux was?

A shareholding in MPL on the basis of after falling so far, it was in his opinion now a Special Situation 'recovery stock'! The share price is since down a further circa 98%!

I rest my case your honour!


Posted previously on here:

'While Richard Penny may be a 'Hall of Fame' Fund Manager, like all of us he is not infallible and can occasionally get it wrong, sometimes spectacularly so, when investing in highly specialist sectors he has zero professional knowledge of.

When Richard was at M&G, his fund was one of the two major shareholders in Mercantile Ports & Logistics (MPL). Some industry friends and I tried in vain, via a number of long phone calls, to explain that the company was a huge fraud and how we knew.

Despite providing overwhelming evidence to support this view, he still went on to take part in a subsequent £37m Placing(after M&G had already put in £15m at the £72m IPO) ...that was supported by a Shareholders Circular I described to him as one of AIM's greatest ever works of fiction, and how I knew.

Sadly, the rest is history, the IPO investors who stumped up £72 million are currently 99.8% down, for what is a straightforward real estate investment. At the time shareholders were told by the lying shysters running the company, that the IPO funds were sufficient to ensure the company was fully funded through to completion of the build out and commencement of operations!

The company has since raised another £130 million from further placings and bank loans, yet after 12 years this tiny new port development is still not even half complete and has a carrying value in the books of circa £190m.

Two industry professionals and myself believe the current value of the work completed to date is around £20-25 million.

The banks who lent MPL £49m have a lien over the asset.

The former MPL CEO who was re-employed by MPL as a high paid consultant, was arrested in 2019 by the FBI on arrival at JFK airport, and charged with a carrying out a $300 million securities fraud in the US. He is currently out on a 7 $figure Bail awaiting trial(He pleaded guilty last year in a plea bargain deal).

The former MPL Executive Chairman who is still a Non Exec, has a criminal record for industrial scale insider trading and is currently the subject of a number of writs alleging fraud and embezzlement, including one stating he siphoned hundreds of £millions out of a company he previously had executive responsibility for into bank accounts held by him and his family. The company subsequently went in to administration.

M&G's original $15m is 99.8% down, and their subsequent placing 'investment' 99.2% down.

Incredibly, the scam is still ongoing today after the shysters running the company were able to keep the lights on by convincing the clueless II's to support another £47m of equity placings.

Link below to Letter sent to the General Council of Cenkos the City Broker who to this day still acts as their NOMAD - one of seven, which went unanswered ...... they didn't even have the courtesy to acknowledge receipt.

Shortly afterwards all references to MPL were removed from their website.

Most of the content was discussed with Richard, who subsequently decided to listen to the two UK NED's who suggested he was being misled - they resigned a few years later after trousering nearly £1m between them for doing Sweet FA for shareholders.'

[davidosh] 20/4/2024 14:14

Do you know if the institutional funders ever visited the port facility. It seems they have been funding this blind

[mount teide] 20/4/2024 10:23

These are the stellar 'hitting out the park' 2022 results the 'management' have to beat in 2023:

£1.80m - Revenue
£6.30m - LOSS
£43.5m - Debt
£25.0m - Debt Interest and Capital Payable over the next 4 years
£1.00m - Estimated Cash
£1.75m - Market cap

To report a catastrophic £6.30m loss on just £1.8m of revenue is almost as astounding as 'spending' £44m and only having around £2-3m of physical infrastructure to show for it a year prior to commencement of the land reclamation programme in 2015! The equivalent of TWO Brink's Matt's heists carried out in broad daylight!

AIMHO/DYOR

[mount teide] 16/4/2024 14:20

R123 - if you had the faintest idea of how to manage a commercial port operation you would be aware that MPL's equity is totally worthless( has been for many years for the reasons I've posted here), and the single asset the company owns as pointed out by w01, is effectively owned by the banks, since they sensibly have a lien over the port asset.

I strongly suspect the Indian banks that extended £50m of loans to MPL will not be able to believe their good fortune, at the news that MPL's 'management' is continuing to pump yet further funds raised from equally clueless Institutional shareholders(who are mostly sitting on massive losses), to further develop the facilities, and thereby raise its value by a few more million.....which I would currently estimate at £20m.

This is still some £10m short of the £30m of loan that has been drawdown and 'spent' by the management before the banks put a stop on any further withdrawals - presumably after, as I suggested, they got an independent valuation of the not even 50% of land reclamation and low quality port infrastructure completed since they commenced work on the scam, err sorry, port project in 2015!

AIMHO/DYOR

[waterloo01] 16/4/2024 13:27

It's the same people, in particular Jay and Ghandi. Just Pavan has changed (although bet he still gets a kick back). This is and will essentially owned by the banks.

[researchcentre123] 16/4/2024 12:36

I think info from 5+ years ago does not reflect the current status. Directors have changed and continued to buy in and NAV per share is an order of magnitude bigger than the share price. I think there could be large upside here

[kumbuka] 20/3/2024 14:43

Looks that way in every way.

[danmart2] 20/3/2024 14:15

This company is a massive fraud

[researchcentre123] 20/3/2024 08:58

I'm looking at it fairly simply - whatever went on before with previous directors, appears to have some value in excess of market cap and new directors have bought in recently - surely they know more than we do. This isn't a huge bet for me but I think it could work out. Next step is see if directors are true to their word and coal shipment drop will turn other way as promised.

[mount teide] 17/3/2024 13:12

Karanja Port was fraudulently sold to its IPO investors and banks as a 200 acre port development project that would be built to handle high value, high revenue generating container, project cargo, road trailer, trade vehicle type cargo.

An impossibility since the access channel from Mumbai Harbour has a draft restriction preventing ships carrying this type of cargo from reaching the port without running aground at least 3 miles from the terminal's jetty!

Karanja can only handle very low volume bulk cargoes like coal arriving in barges and coasters - cargo which attracts ultra low handling revenue per tonne. In the eight months between Jan and August 2023, the port handled 863k tonnes of cargo - equivalent to that which could be loaded into just TWO China-Max dry bulk carriers!

Coal handled through the Port of Mumbai currently generates cargo handling revenue of less than £1 a tonne!

And don't forget, the results of the last two years will have been greatly boosted by having revenue(with little cost) from the civil engineering company that used Karanja Port as an operating base to build a bridge over Mumbai Harbour. That contract is now finished......so, all MPL has left is the pittance they earn from handling ultra low revenue generating bulk cargo's like coal and fertiliser.

This was the hitting out the park 2022 results,
£1.80m - Revenue
£6.30m - LOSS
£43.5m - Debt
£25.0m - Debt Interest and Capital Payable over the next 4 years
£1.00m - Estimated Cash
£1.75m - Market cap

To report an £6.30m loss on just £1.8m of revenue is almost as astounding as 'spending' £44m and only having around £2-3m of physical infrastructure to show for it a year prior to commencement of the land reclamation programme in 2015!

For those that like a laugh - the market will not have long to wait before the MPL 'management' deign to grace it with the results of their collective efforts in 2023.

Sadly for those still holding the stock, MPL's former 'management', both criminals with convictions for industrial scale securities fraud, left behind a bunch of fools to mind the bank's assets.


Worth revisiting some of the breathtaking shenanigans the two shysters who originally brought the project to the London AIM casino got up to with shareholders cash and the bank's loans - a link to help refresh memories:

A little taster:

'Totally implausible cash burn of circa £44m in the year PRIOR to the start of the Land reclamation work - nearly 2 Brinks Matt heists carried out in broad daylight!.

I estimate the cash burn should have been a small fraction of the £44m at circa £3-5m.

Totally implausible cash burn AFTER Land Reclamation started - £58m between June 2016 and June 2017, and an astonishing circa £21m during Q4/2016 when no on-site activity whatsoever was going on.'



When Jeremy Warner Allen was appointed Chairman in 2019, he said "I truly believe in the potential of MPL and have full confidence that we will deliver a profitable and valuable business to all our stake holders. I have no doubt that the future will be exciting for the Company and I look forward to playing my part in growing the business and the platform as a whole."

I have since written to him and asked "what have you been doing for shareholders since joining the Board in 2018?"

As I noted, "in common with your predecessor you do not hold any shipping or ports industry professional qualifications or have any first hand senior management experience of either industry.

Consequently, as shareholders (one share), currently holding the highest professional qualifications the Shipping and Ports industries currently examine for, and with decades of senior management experience running ports and shipping companies, i'd like to offer some advice in your new role.

Suggest you start by appointing a reputable Marine Civil Engineering Consultancy to carry out a cost analysis of the Karanja Port construction work completed to date and then, after pouring yourself a very large brandy, compare the figure with the circa £160m carrying value that is currently in MPL's accounts for this 'asset'.

Once you've finished the bottle and sobered up, request the Marine Civil Engineering Consultants to then conduct a forensic audit (and give a professional opinion) on every payment over £10k made to contractors since 2012 - while they're doing that, we suggest you order yourself a case of vintage brandy for when you read the report.

Never received a reply ..... the rest as they say is history, with IPO investors now 99.8% down and most subsequent placing investors down by very similar amounts for what is a straightforward low spec real estate development.

The clueless II's who collectively gave the shysters £150m over the last decade for 'equity' should be arrested for impersonating fund management professionals.

[kumbuka] 17/3/2024 11:17

If you couldn’t see this was fraud from the beginning it only adds to showing how incompetent you are.

[kumbuka] 17/3/2024 11:15

Your opinions are worthless bully boy pj.

[pj 1] 17/3/2024 08:53

Most frauds try to go 'ligit' towards the end in an attempt to deflect was has happened historically and hide the trail so to speak, so there is always a chance gullible investors can be suckered in. Add on the P&D risk, which cleary researchcentre123 above is a part of, and its easy to see what may happen......Similar is currently happening at MIN in my opinion, but the Bulls there just dont see it, or more accurately dont want to see it because it means admitting they got it wrong.

There are also frauds where financially gain, once part completed , does not become the main focus. That changes to the fact they are simple suckering people in and it becomes a power game.

As is happening in CTAG currently, in my opinion.

[danmart2] 15/3/2024 13:28

Your in for a long wait

This is a massive fraud , do some research

[researchcentre123] 15/3/2024 13:22

Bit quiet here! I'm just waiting for for an update when hopefully the coal contracts increase

[mount teide] 24/1/2024 14:39

R123 - with the greatest respect, I would strongly urge you to carry out some high quality research on MPL and the wider ports and shipping sectors.

If you did, you'd quickly establish that MPL's equity is worthless!

[researchcentre123] 17/1/2024 09:49

When you look at it you have a new bunch of directors who've taken over and are putting their own money into the business. There have been 2 lots of director buy-ins at this deflated price. That would suggest that they believe that the dip in revenue is temporary and they will succeed in their refinance. If you add in that one director has in recent times put some millions of his own money in this business, and there are loans secured on the buildings suggesting that banks agree with the valuations. That puts assets per share at 15.9 times what it's currently trading for or 25.44 pence per share. This is essentially a start up, just starting to get revenue coming in. Of course it's not all easy, but I take some comfort in the fact that directors themselves have the same interests as shareholders.

[realdealy] 10/1/2024 16:15

Liberalism great isn't it.


Maybe Putin would stop the complete fraud of mpl. Great Britannia won't

.bring plenty of lube.

[tomboyb] 10/1/2024 12:40

This consolidated at 0.2-0.3p -

It would not surprise me if this eventually ended up there again -

[tomboyb] 10/1/2024 10:43

Interesting when the whole investor community knew not to give MPL money but was supported regardless -

Makes you wonder W I M M H -