Mbl Share Discussion Threads

[masurenguy] 06/9/2011 08:57

marben100 - 3 Sep'11 - 4199: It really appears that the directors don't give a stuff about shareholders and have once again scheduled the AGM for 10am on Monday 26th September at the company's offices in Leyland. Those of us that attended last year's AGM at the same venue made it clear that the location and timing of the AGM made it extremely difficult for most shareholders to attend.

Effortless Cool - 3 Sep'11 - 4200: I think there have been many bigger indications here about what the directors think of the shareholders than the scheduling of the AGM! I would assume they want to make it difficult for shareholders to attend this year.

They really didn't seem to find it at all difficult to ignore the original request by shareholders that was made and minuted last year unless they considered that a 30 minute later start technically complied with that request. If they really wanted to adopt a more amicable relationship with shareholders why didn't they opt for a late morning/early afternoon start at the outset and also consider a more accessible location like a hotel in the centre of Manchester. The above two comments seems to reflect the external shareholders
view of the attitude that the directors continue to display toward them.

[davidosh] 06/9/2011 08:21

Just to inform everyone that I have lodged an official request that the AGM time be rescheduled to later in the day and ideally at least 11.30 am to allow everyone at least four hours of travel time. I suggested the company should provide refreshments as this would run through lunchtime and allow at least two hours for the meeting as there is significant interest from shareholders.

Our complaint last year about the 9.30 am start was minuted so it will be very difficult to ignore this request.

[davidosh] 05/9/2011 00:33

I am sure there will be a large attendance even if they went for a 7am start but I do think we should make an official complaint after the promises of last year.

Jeffian....thanks for the offer and I may well join with you for the journey as there are very few train options from Kent. I stayed up in Blackpool the night before last year but not possible this time.

[jeffian] 04/9/2011 22:57

David,

PC is the only director up for re-election. I imagine he is dying to be voted off!

I shall be getting up at dawn to have the pleasure of seeing a Leyland sunrise. Anyone requiring a lift up from London is very welcome.

[davidosh] 04/9/2011 18:18

Which of the board members are up for re-election ?

I am amazed that they are getting an Agm set up so fast after the results release that was delayed. The Agm last year was actually a month later and started at 9.30am.

Maybe a London Q&A is even more important now or should we block book a hotel near Leyland for the early start ? How many think they can make the 10.00am meeting on the 26th ?

[jeffian] 04/9/2011 13:30

marben100 (#4199)

Yes, I laughed when I got my Notice of AGM and saw that the Board had indeed listened to the concerns of shareholders and moved the AGM from a user-unfriendly 9.30am on a Monday in Leyland to....errrr.....10am on a Monday in Leyland. Who says shareholder activism doesn't work, eh?!

[masurenguy] 04/9/2011 11:41

So the collective remuneration of the Board for FY 2010/2011 (£565,000) was the equivalent to 23.5% of the market cap of the company as at 31/3/11 (circa £2.4m at 14p).

Over the past two years (2010 & 2011) the collective board remuneration has been as follows:

T. Allan: £1,120,000 + £388,000 = £1,508,000 in salary and bonus. (He has also received £339,000 and £271,000 in divIdend payments over the past 20 months too.) His total income from the company was therefore £2,118,000 during that period.

P. Cowgill: £330,000 = £30,000 = £360,000 (plus circa £27,000 in dividends)

L. Clarke: £265,000 + £147,000 = £412,000 (plus circa £1500 in dividends).

Total salary and bonuses to the 3 board members over the past two years amounted to £2,250,000 which contrasts with the current market cap of the company of £1,973,000 at Fridays closing price.

Anyone recall this comment from Peter Cowgill in the October 2009 AGM statement. "I am also delighted to announce that following a retention payment the Group has secured the services of Trevor Allan for a period of three years. In view of the fact that we are unable to incentivise Trevor with a share option scheme because his existing shareholding could mean that this would trigger a bid for the company, the Group has also entered into a challenging performance related three year bonus agreement with Trevor."

I'm perplexed why the company needed to make a "retention payment" and establish a 3 year bonus scheme for a CEO who already owned 26% of the shares in the company and where other family members also owned a further 13% of the shares. With a family stake of over 40% in the business and aggregate remuneration of £2115,000,000 over 2008 and 2009 fiscal years, one would have thought that he had plenty of incentive to remain and look after his own interests. Since the share price has fallen by 93%
over the past 12 months none of the shareholders have seen any subsequent value enhancement either.

[deswalker] 04/9/2011 11:15

Cheers Ian.

[ianguerin] 04/9/2011 09:19

Director's remuneration:

PC 30k (330k
TA 388k (1120k)
LC 147k (265k)

[deswalker] 03/9/2011 20:46

The AR isn't yet on the website so I can't research this myself, so I'd be very grateful if you could post the Director Remuneration for the past year. Many thanks.

[effortless cool] 03/9/2011 19:01

Mark,

I think there have been many bigger indications here about what the directors think of the shareholders than the scheduling of the AGM!

I would assume they want to make it difficult for shareholders to attend this year.

[marben100] 03/9/2011 18:22

Have received annual report and notice of AGM today.

It really appears that the directors don't give a stuff about shareholders and have once again scheduled the AGM for 10am on Monday 26th September at the company's offices in Leyland. Those of us that attended last year's AGM at the same venue made it clear that the location and timing of the AGM made it extremely difficult for most shareholders to attend.

Mark

[judgement] 31/8/2011 13:10

Archive of domain sales here, but no mention of bee.com

Don't know how comprehensive their record is.

[masurenguy] 29/8/2011 11:32

A perceptive post from KestonMark on TMF yesterday.

"This is a shocking story for investors and the poor employees at MBL and contrasts with the corporate greed that was going on at the top ! I do not have a shareholding but would be tempted to ask some embarrassing questions to Peter Cowgill the chairman who is also the head of JD Sports where he earns millions for running a FTSE250 company. He has the most to lose reputationally in this fiasco.

My questions are;

a) Why did you receive £300,000 in bonus awarded just a few months before the company collapsed ? What was the term within your remuneration contract that specifically allows a reward that was ten times your annual salary at MBL ?

b) Can you send me the full details of all the executives pay awards and the formal contracts as the bonus payments are so excessive that it feels like everyone helped themselves to millions of pounds just in time before the bad news came out ?

c) Can you explain why £2m was given to directors of U-Xplore and not invested into joint vehicle with 50% of money and control with MBL and that money invested in projects to benefit both companies ? The £2m investment in U-Xplore has been written off in one year and so purely went to fill the U_Xplore directors pockets. Were you paid an advisory fee for this investment and why did JD Sports not invest £2m at the same time as JD were no less obvious as bed partners in this hair brained scheme ??

d) Do JD Sports have a head office team or consultants advising on the acquisition of leases and warehousing facilities ? If so, and as you will be ten times more experienced in such areas than all the other board members put together, did you provide all the guidance and input necessary before a warehouse contract was entered into by MBL ?

e) Why did MBL sign a 15 year non cancellable lease in late 2009 when the world had aleady collapsed in 2008 and presumably the north of England was awash with such facilities even in 2007 where rent free periods would have been the norm ? That 15 year lease has just cost £1.2m and I am told it went into the pocket of a good friend at U-Xplore. Can you confirm this is true ?

f) There was only a guaranteed two years left on the contract with an 80% dominated Morrisons supply contract that would leave the business decimated if it ended. Why sign a 15 year deal in such a situation with no break clause ? Surely three years would have been the maximum safe commitment.

g) Are you sure investors and shareholders can have confidence going forward in a board that has destroyed shareholder value over the last three years whilst taking huge remuneration and rewards ?"

[strollingmolby] 29/8/2011 11:22

Yes, and I wonder if a related party was the most recent owner before MUBL (not in the UKLA-sense of the meaning), but one of the Leyland set?

[fft] 29/8/2011 11:10

if anyone has an account (not one of the free ones) on domaintools.com, then they can see the changes of ownership in a domain name.

All i can see with my free acct is :

Registrar History: 2 registrars
NS History: 7 changes on 7 unique name servers over 6 years.
IP History: 30 changes on 17 unique IP addresses over 6 years.
Whois History: 365 records have been archived since 2000-10-24 .
Dedicated Hosting: bee.com is hosted on a dedicated server.

And it only has 2990 unique vistors per months.


archive.org shows me old pages and that it started off as a management consultancy, then a city look up type thing, and then a site for bees before mubl took it over. 300k ? what a waste of money.

[alunmorris] 29/8/2011 09:40

>purchased the bee.com domain for £300k? If so shareholders may like to know more about this. Domain names with no history or relevance eg bee.com cost £9.99

I was surprised by this amount, but it's not true that you can buy short .com's for £10. I checked and bee.com had been was registered in 1997 or earlier.

All short English words went long ago as .com's.

Even so £300k is a lot. It didn't have to be such a short name to be memorable. This year grid.com sold for $275k, ocean.com for $100k, which is as good a name as bee.com


I was not able to find whom MBL bought bee.com from, not that it matters.

[davidosh] 27/8/2011 20:00

Apologies the original post was duplicated. Incidentally anyone know how The Hut floatation plans are going ?

[davidosh] 27/8/2011 20:00

Timesmoney....Can you email me via TMF by replying to this post and ticking the email reply to author option.

[timesmoney] 27/8/2011 14:15

Is it bad drafting in the statement, or is the company suggesting that it purchased the bee.com domain for £300k? If so shareholders may like to know more about this. Domain names with no history or relevance eg bee.com cost £9.99

[microscope] 26/8/2011 15:01

Marben, I don't know if you are referring to me, and didn't mean to make another post, but just incase you were, I think it's only fair that what I said is put in context, which I'm not sure it has been.

microscope - 26 Aug'11 - 12:15 - 4180 of 4187 edit

'...I entirely agree with Des, and while Mello and informal meetings have been highly successful with many companies, and I don't in any way knock Mello, surely it's high time to accept 'informal' has thoroughly failed in this instance....'

It's a matter of opinion whther a buyout in three figures was ever looking cheap following the U-Xplore purchase and at the time with the Morrisons contract up for grabs. My opinion is that it was unrealistic.

[charliebrown2000] 26/8/2011 15:01

The focus on How Did We Get Into This State is farcical! Where is this going is more pertinent. New warehouse - an expensive albatross, U-Explore investment revealed to be worthless, GMV undoubtedly going off to Sainsbury's at a fire sale price (oh, to be on the Sainsbury's side of the table at that negotiation. "I'm your only client! Without me you have nothing!"), so-called Morrisons stock - no value (Tesco sells this rubbish for £2 each now!). So, what are you left with? A small distributor of CDs and DVDs with no major clients and a couple of shops (Look out HMV, someone trying to board your ship as it goes down fast!). The smart guys cashed in ages ago. There's no happy ending here.

[kimboy2] 26/8/2011 14:57

Well for a start I think davidosh does a fairly remarkable job with the various events he organises, not that I have been to any. If people are looking to blame some sort of shareholder meeting with Directors as the source of a problem then I think they are just looking to blame someone.

I also very much agree with marben that for investors that competent management is the key. In this case they weren't and I (among others) weren't smart enough to spot it.

FWIW I don't believe they have acted illegally. I have no doubt that there is a good dose of cronyism and self interest at our expense, but anyone would be hard pushed to prove criminality.

I have countless questions I could ask but I think the eventual answer would be that they made a judgement and that they got it wrong.

As for the future well I don't have any confidence in MUBL. The revenues have been cut by 80% and the workforce by 50%, which isn't a good start.

I am not really clear what they intend to do as a continuing business. Anything to do with CDs and games is going to have a limited life. As for opening a load of retail shops selling them, well it just seems a dead end.

[davidosh] 26/8/2011 13:48

microscope....We were not the ones who created the offer period ! It was also well before the Morrisons contract announcement so a share price well above £1 was very justified at the time.

I am not quite sure why you are using phrases such as 'lessons have not been learned' and 'unreal' 'wake up' and 'self confessed experts'. Are you a teacher or feeling high and mighty over something here ?

I personally intend to get to the bottom of a large number of issues here and I am trying to help investors generally in many of the events I arrange. We all have to work together to gain some sort of satisfactory conclusion here.