Mercantile Ports & Logis... Share Discussion Threads

[waterloo01] 19/6/2018 10:53

Absolutely, but the regulators can't even take on a blatant fraud like this, let alone the whole NOMAD lack of accountability.

Re MPL, it's so bleeding obvious what they are doing, yet again. They will have some very limited low value cargo, where the site is essentially used for storage (and not dry storage at that), claim they are now earning revenue and raise more funds (as they have clearly stated). I note from Google earth that the road to the site, hasn't been upgraded at all and remains a partly paved track, hardly the 'world class port, is it.

I would dearly like to see some jail time, but that's about as likely as them making a profit

[mount teide] 19/6/2018 09:43

Arden Partners Note - Dec 2013

'SKIL has designed its Karanja terminal to be built on 200 acres of reclaimed estuary land and to consist of 1,000m of quay.'

Clearly, as reference Arden must have used the excellent Royal Haskoning Design Plan for Karanja Port when making that comment in their Analysts Note.

Of course they did - because Arden Partners were given it by the MPL management to include in their Dec 2013 Note(written some 9 months after ITD Cementation were appointed as the main contractor), along with Royal Haskoning's Overall General Arrangement Plan(the key document of the Construction Tender Contract).

This is most interesting, because it confirms that ITD will have based their £57m fixed price tender offer for the marine civil engineering construction work, on the basis of a 200 acre port and 1,000m fixed quay, as per the Royal Haskoning General Arrangement plan - a document kindly provided by the MPL Management for the Ardens's Note, and on which is clearly stamped in BOLD TYPE "FOR TENDER', suggesting it was almost certainly a copy of the Final Draft that would have been used in the Contract Tender Process some 12 months earlier!


After re-reading the Arden Partners Dec 2013 Analysts Note, it clearly raises a number of serious questions for Arden to answer:

Including but not restricted to:

Why was the port specification materially changed following ITD's appointment but not made known to Investors some 9 months later in Arden's Note: to a much lower cost, considerably smaller, open, lightweight 360m piled jetty, which has a materially higher operating cost and hugely restricted use during the 4 to 6 month monsoon season, since it has no weather protection?

Port Construction - What due diligence did Arden Partners carry out to confirm the comment in the Note that 'construction is now underway'? Because, there was NO on-site construction underway when the Note was written, as the reclamation site was inaccessible by road for aggregate vehicles due to a 50m wide fast flowing tidal creek, and would remain so for over a year until Dec 2014; just 9 months before the expected start up date of cargo operations at Karanja, according to Arden's impeccably researched Note!

Was Arden expecting that £44m of shareholders funds would be 'spent' before a single aggregate vehicle arrived on site at Karanja, to start the land reclamation - because we cannot find any Note comment referring to it? If so, perhaps Arden could inform investors where they believe the money has been 'spent'!

Likewise were Arden expecting that management would have 'spent' £94m to date to reclaim circa 90 acres of mostly foreshore and lay 160 lightweight shallow water piles? Because, we can find no evidence of it in their Notes. If so, perhaps Arden could inform investors where they believe the money has been 'spent'!

Do you think that any II investing on the basis of the contents of your Dec 2013 Note, would consider themselves to have been misled?

Also, with the benefit of hindsight, like some shareholders, would Arden Partners consider the content of the 31 October 2016 Shareholders Circular to raise another £37m, which Arden Partners were deeply involved in, and for which they took their near £200k payment in full by way of MPL 10p shares(oh dear!), as Fraud by False Representation, and for which an official complaint has been submitted by shareholders to the AIM Regulator and the SFO?

AIOHO/DYOR

[mount teide] 19/6/2018 09:33

'This notification is publicly available'

Pity that the management made no photographs publicly available during 2014 when they were committing fraud by false representation in company statements by lying about the principal contractor being on site progressing Land reclamation with up to 500 operatives - that it co-incided perfectly with the disappearance of up to £40m of shareholders funds and debt BEFORE the principal contractor had mobilised on site to commence the Land reclamation was hugely suspicious.

As was the claim in October 2016 that on-site construction work had continued uninterrupted since Oct 2015, and was progressing at record pace during H2/2016 - in order to facilitate the extortion of another £37m from Institutional Investors - when in fact a photograph on site at any time during that time period will have shown this to be another case of industrial scale Fraud by false representation, since no Land Reclamation or Berth piling whatsoever went on at all during H2/2016. The true scale of the fraud can be best gauged by the fact that in the two years since Q2/2016, only 15 acres of the additional 125 acres of land reclamation that the £37m placing money was allegedly raised for and which the management expected to complete the reclamation in full by Q2/2017 latest, has actually been completed.

The arrogant, nauseatingly disingenuous CEO's totally fraudulent claim in summer 2014, that no on-site photographs of land reclamation were possible due to the site being adjacent to a high security military base was shown like nearly everything else that has since come out of his mouth to not only be totally worthless - but highly misleading at best. There again, what do you expect from someone with no ports or shipping industry experience or qualifications, who has generated a 99% loss in shareholder value post IPO to deliver a small part finished port development project that bears no resemblance to what the market was told in the IPO documentation and, where the asset value is at best worth 25% of the totally implausible carrying cost to date.

AIOHO/DYOR

[diku] 19/6/2018 07:10

Wonder if customs final decision approval gets delayed?...




Mercantile Ports and Logistics (AIM:MPL), is delighted to announce that the it has received notification under section 7 of the Customs Act 1962 of the appointment of Karanja Port and Logistics Limited's ("KPL") Karanja Terminal as a customs port. The Board considers this to be the major development in the customs clearance process and consistent with Board's view that receipt of final customs' clearance is a formality. This notification is publicly available and is, therefore, expected to be helpful in the discussions with future customers. Final customs' approval is expected to be received within a few weeks.

[diku] 18/6/2018 21:32

Now that Divi has reappeared what chance the share price will half again!!...

[my retirement fund] 18/6/2018 12:25

Good work MTYea DVI you are clearly one of life's sprites, nothing can get you down. I really admire you and wish I could have a view on life as positive and jolly.Sadly I cannot and tend to see the harsh reality of life.Hats off to you, you are an inspiration to all, don't ever change and the world will love you for who you are.

[mount teide] 18/6/2018 11:55

Some of the posters on the LSE website are totally clueless - like the II's they cant see the wood for the trees

Last year, I reported to Cenkos's regulatory compliance officer that the account manager responsible for handling their MPL account consistently failed to provide answers to complaints over a considerable period of time. To us, he acted more like a defence counsel for MPL than a Nomad.

The conversations included serious complaints over comments in RNS Statements and/or Financial Statements that were deliberately misleading to make it difficult, if not impossible to ascertain the rate of progress with the berth piling for example, in order to be able to hold management to account.

Or completely false statements, as in the outrageous claim made by the Executive Chairman, that Land reclamation work was ongoing and progressing in line with management expectation, during at least a 9 month period in 2014, when the only means of access to the Port for commercial aggregate trucks required the suicidal action of a drive across a deep, 40m wide fast flowing tidal creek!

Funnily enough, there was no enthusiasm among the drivers for an early grave and so, sensibly they waited a total of 18 months until the creek was finally bridged in Nov 2014.

Today's RNS clearly shows nothing has changed!

There is no value whatsoever here given the debt to the banks and their lien over the asset. Indeed the value of the completed project is in our opinion still considerably less than the outstanding £53m of debt capital, never mind the eye-watering $40 odd million of outstanding debt interest payments.

[deepvalueinvestor] 18/6/2018 10:08

Hello to the long time sufferers.

Despite the usual misery on this thread, the lease extension to 50 years is clearly good news. Let’s just hope they can survive long enough to benefit! The long term bull case strengthens and certainly makes it more likely I will add again on the way up if revenues become meaningful. If they could reorganise the debt, I would feel happier though.

[dave4545] 18/6/2018 10:04

Got to love the LSE pump and dumpers though. A ramper on there can post 200 times a day and still have the energy for more

[my retirement fund] 18/6/2018 09:51

Yes its yet another sprat to catch a mackerel.They need to be commended for this charade though imo.Its a shame AIM does not hold annual award for the company with the most absurd, laughable and having the least credibility.The award could be called something like " The annual AIM scam or sham award of the year"I can see it now, the directors flying over from Mumbai by chartered private Jet to collect it.

[phowdo] 18/6/2018 07:48

Yep, that RNS is priming for another fundraise.

[waterloo01] 18/6/2018 07:31

Extending the port as soon as they can get their hands on more of someone else's cash.

[mount teide] 09/6/2018 14:19

SW Monsoon reached Mumbai today resulting in severe flooding across the city and Maharashtra.

Such has been the initial intensity of the monsoon, some weather experts have predicted the flooding situation might exceed the record breaking 2005 Mumbai rains and disastrous flooding.

Predictably, no pre-monsoon update from the MPL 'management' before they celebrated the commencement of their EIGHTH 6 month fully expensed annual holidays - to fully rest up and recuperate in opulent white gloved butler serviced luxury after delivering a total of 15 additional acres of land reclamation during the last two years and none during the last 13 months! Despite fraudulently telling the market in October 2016 that they would fast track the remainder of the 125 acres of land reclamation for completion by the Q2/2017, if only the London Capital Markets would indulge them with another £37m of their client's retirement savings!

Of course, the request was beautifully dressed up with MPL's very own version of 'project fear' - that should the venal charlatans fail to extort the money, sadly, the previous £110m extorted would likely all be lost!

The rest as they say is history - we predicated on here this would happen at the time of the placing and forecast exactly how the next two years of the scam would unfold - but sadly the institutional investors now sitting on more than 99% of losses, elected to listen to two bought and paid for UK Non Execs without any Port or Shipping Industry qualifications whatsoever.

Who have since done a runner with the best part of £800,000 of shareholders funds in their offshore bank accounts for doing sweet FA for seven years - despite repeated requests for them to investigate what is going on, after we provided information which was complete news to them, proving that the executive management had repeatedly lied to the market regarding construction progress and its true cost; all aided and abetted by the Nomad's representative.

[saucepan] 31/5/2018 08:58

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply; appreciated. Good luck with the fight.

[mount teide] 30/5/2018 21:24

Saucepan - we did indeed - last summer and again recently following receipt of information from a whistleblower - as with the Barclays fraud case the wheels of motion turn incredibly slowly in these organisations!

They refuse point blank to discuss or give any update as to what they may or may not be doing with the information provided!

The Nomad is no different - refusing outright to even discuss any of the highly detailed 7 letters of complaint sent to them!

The main problem with regulators like the FCA is that they are entirely funded by the Financial services industry they are expected to regulate rather than the taxpayer. Likewise the Nomad is funded entirely by the management of the companies they represent.

[saucepan] 30/5/2018 20:58

Mount Teide: I thought you and your associates had already put a well-reasoned and well-documented case in front of the regulators and the SFO some months ago. Am I incorrect in that understanding or has nothing come of it?

[mount teide] 30/5/2018 19:44

The Indian Monsoon season has started in the south - it hit Kerala yesterday, three days earlier than usual and is expected to reach Mumbai by the end of next week - and herald the official start of management's 8th 6 month annual holiday and $25,000/month luxury travel expenses courtesy of UK pension savers.

So two years after reaching 75 of the 200 acres of reclaimed land for the port the venal charlatans masquerading as management have added a total of just a further 15 acres.

Nauseatingly disingenuous behaviour at best, considering they used industrial scale fraud by false representation to raise another $37m from the London Capital Markets in order to 'fast track'(oh the irony!) the completion of the 200 acres of land reclamation and port development work by Q3/2017 - according to AIM's Greatest work of fiction - the MPL Shareholders circular dated 30 October 2016!

Reality: two years later after 'spending'(i use that word in its loosest possible sense) upwards of a further £50m all they have to show for it is just another 15 acres of land reclamation and are still yet to complete the small lightweight jetty and the minimum port infrastructure to secure the necessary approvals to enable operations to commence in even a very limited way.

Where is the 100 acre of land reclamation for the logistics park that Gandhi told the market to expect first revenues from by late 2014? Some 4 years later the land reclamation work for it is still yet to start and they have just £20m left of the £150m they have raised to date to build a 200 acre port and logistics facility - despite awarding a construction contract for the whole port development that was won with a tender of £57m!

Likewise shareholders would like to know where the £44m was 'spent' prior to starting land reclamation work in late 2014 - and why to hide the scam they fraudulently told the market for nine months from March 2014, that reclamation work was progressing in line with management's expectations with up to 500 operatives on site - when in fact THERE WAS NO ONE ON SITE UNTIL DECEMBER 2014 BECAUSE NO ACCESS WAS POSSIBLE UNTIL A 50 metre WIDE FAST FLOWING TIDAL CREEK WAS BRIDGED.

Concerned shareholders should forward their complaints to AIM regulation, the FCA and the SFO.

AIOHO/DYOR

[diku] 16/5/2018 22:24

Chinese are hard working people...

[mount teide] 13/5/2018 23:57

The new offshore Port of Shanghai, China is now the busiest container port in the world, handling over 40million freight containers a year.

To put this in some perspective, the Port of Shanghai on its own now handles more freight containers annually, than:
* The top 10 US Container Ports and top UK Container port(Felixstowe) COMBINED
* More than the top 7 European Ports COMBINED
* More than 6 TIMES the top 3 UK Ports COMBINED
* More than 8 TIMES JNPT/Mumbai

Phase 1 of Shanghai's new container port was built in the same time(4 years) that MPL has been 'building' Karanja (90 acres part reclaimed to date and a part complete 360m jetty.)

In four years at the Port of Shanghai, Chinese engineers reclaimed and developed over 25,000 acres of land for the new port in 20metres of fast flowing tidal waters some 35km offshore and built a connecting sea-bridge to the new port, which has a deep water container quay over 10,000 metres long capable of handling thirty five 300 metre ships at a time.

Not difficult to see why the MPL shareprice has dropped 99% since IPO!

[pj 1] 01/5/2018 08:01

Relax guys.

The travelling expenses (subsistence) is budgeted for. I'm sure the BoD can account for every penny spent in that certain area.

I'd say its guaranteed its the only budget they have hit their target on.

[escapetohome] 01/5/2018 00:23

Not even worthy of a response, i certainly wont dignify it.

Not a single amaoeba of intelligent response.