Mercantile Ports & Logis... Share Discussion Threads

[pj 1] 26/7/2017 11:57

Cant help thinking that History will show this as the start if the infamous 'Dead Cat Bounce?

[mount teide] 26/7/2017 11:37

As PJ! alluded to - 'Arden's 'research note' written to allow certain investors an escape route to exit on any spike up imo. I wonder how much Nikhitall Gandhi has paid them to produce it? ''minor slippages''- its a disgrace.'

S/P is being walked back up by MM's on no volume - has all the hallmarks of the MM's working hand in silk glove with an existing large II holder/s, trying to create a share price spike in a desperate attempt to manufacture an escape route from the burning property with all escape routes barricaded shut, that we predicted they would find themselves in, should they naively accept the contents of the 31 October 2016 Shareholders Circular as fact and carry out no due diligence worthy of the name.

To get out, small PI's would do well to ignore any manufactured share price 'spikes' at their peril - since:

The management are proven liars and attempted to conceal circa £44m of 'expenditure' before a single aggregate truck got onto the site to be developed, by repeatedly using Fraud by False Representation.

Followed up by further Fraud by False Representation via the documentation used to support the £37m Placing and Open Offer.

MPL is totally un-investible and when the last of the money runs out during the next 18 months, will see the equity worthless, and the banks become the new owners of assets allegedly costing £148m to build but, probably to the utter astonishment of many II investors, see the banks accept any open market offer of circa £20m to £25m.

And do not be surprised if the only 'offer' of circa £25m comes from a consortium backed by people with names that are familiar to you; using cash to fund the deal 'raised' from guess who?

AIOHO/DYOR

[orinocor] 23/7/2017 19:35

hxxps://www.shareprophets.com/views/30480/the-mercantile-ports-logistics-fraud-arden-partners-now-on-the-record

[mount teide] 22/7/2017 11:25

Waterloo - indeed, we're continuing to evaluate all options - driven by a determination to see justice and accountability prevail.

[waterloo01] 22/7/2017 11:13

MT, I wonder if the next point of pressure, assuming the regulators continue to ignore the obvious fraud, is to talk with your local MP. Given the work put in by you on this, it will be an 'easy win' for the MP in demanding some written answers to a parliamentary question (when of course they return from their well deserved summer break!

[mount teide] 22/7/2017 11:03

Shareholders Circular - 31 October 2016 - one of AIM's Greatest Works Of Fiction?

'Subject to the Company being able to secure the Funding by the end of the first quarter of 2017, the Company is working to the following timetable in order to achieve FULL OPERATIONAL completion of the Facility by the end of the third quarter of 2017' -
IF YOU'RE GOING TO COMMIT A SCAM AT LEAST USE A LITTLE SOPHISTICATION, RATHER THAN CRUDELY CRAFTED NONSENSE LIKE THIS FOR A £37M FUND RAISING, BECAUSE:


Aside from the WELL DOCUMENTED BLATANT FRAUD BY FALSE REPRESENTATION, that work had continued uninterrupted since October 2015, and that land reclamation was being accelerated to achieve another 65 acres by Jan 2017(ZERO ACHIEVED BECAUSE AS WE NOW KNOW NO RECLAMATION WHATSOEVER WAS BEING CARRIED OUT), a further 105 acres by March 2017(4 ACRES ACHIEVED IN 9 MONTHS), and a further 125 acres by June 2017(15 ACRES ACHIEVED IN 12 MONTHS) - A 12 MONTH PERFORMANCE SCANDALOUSLY AND FRAUDULENTLY DESCRIBED IN THE PRELIMS AS "RECLAMATION CONTINUES APACE!"


Let's now take a DEEPER look at OTHER perhaps less obvious at first sight, CASES OF FRAUD BY FALSE REPRESENTATION IN THAT DOCUMENT. Namely, the highly material change to the Port design, from a fixed all weather quay design integrated into a 200 acre port and logistics park facility - as detailed in the Dec 2013 Arden Note, a 2014 video produced by Mercantile for promotional purposes and the latest front page image on the Company website(if only!).

Some eight months after raising £37m in the Placing and Open Offer, the company announces to the Market that the Port Specification has changed. Not to a much higher specification facility but incredibly, to the 'Directors Preferred Layout' a lightweight, totally weather affected, open piled jetty with a single access point, and that the total build 'cost' had increased from a highly improbable £110m to a totally outrageous, implausible and scandalous £148m!

Fortunately, when dealing with totally incompetent scam artists with no industry knowledge or training, its does not take a Phd in Marine Civil Engineering to work out that such a material change should have generated a circa £25m reduction in build cost NOT a £38m INCREASE, since it involves the LOSS of some 30 to 50 acres of hardstanding from the maximum of 200 acres available from the 1000m sea frontage footprint, and a massively lower cost berth configuration. ( Now do you see why they are not going to do any more than 90 to 100 acres of land reclamation to begin with! - because the new berth configuration would highlight that 200 acres was no longer possible, since 30 to 50 acres would be lost providing shipping access to the inner 'berths'!).

Shareholders were told in the Prelims:

'An optimised berth configuration will now include approximately 800 meters of quay length (200 meters more than envisaged at the time of Admission) by utilising both sides of a 400 meter jetty. Such a configuration will allow for 600 meters of waterfront (out of a total of 1000 meters) to be available for future expansion.

Reclamation continues apace and circa 90 acres of land have now been reclaimed. This is sufficient reclaimed land to enable the facility to commence operations once the vital services and infrastructure have been installed. In addition, sufficient reclamation material for at least a further 10 acres of land is on site, with this material currently being used for the surcharging process.'

MPL has laid 160 piles, which is sufficient for 250 meters of jetty. The Company intends to lay 240 piles in total. Reclamation will cease for the duration of the monsoon.'

Read the above and then re-read until the penny drops!



In layman's terms, what it is suggesting(confirmed by the company in public statements), is that at time of the Placing and Open Offer, the Company was claiming it is not cash strapped but required the extra £37m to complete the build out to the Directors preferred specification - which they conveniently failed to detail in the document and, for 8 months afterwards until the release of the carefully worded Prelim statements above.

That these statements required extremely careful crafting was an understatement(according to a highly reliable source, incredibly, the Nomad, Company and Comms Agency had been working on this and the rest of the Prelims for over a month - you can tell where their priorities lie!), since it necessitated the new much lower build cost but, weather affected and much higher operating cost berth/hardstanding design to be described as a material improvement over the original design to justify the £38m additional build expense. A technical impossibility, since it is no such thing - tip: if you're trying to pull the wool over shareholders eyes at least use a little sophistication and hire some industry professionals to guide you when writing these documents, so they will at least convey a veneer of plausibility.

Of course, these statements were yet more nonsense designed to mislead, because immediately after announcing to the Market more funds were required to complete the build out to the Directors preferred specification, i complained bitterly via a long phone call with Mercantile's lead defence counsel err sorry, Nomad representative, that instead of raising more money, if as Mercantile claims, they have sufficient funds to complete 180 acres of land reclamation and the construction of 6 berths by March 2017, they should do what any professional port operator would do - namely use the March 2017 stage of completion to become operational, start generating some cash flow and then look to complete the small remainder of the terminal as funds allow thereafter.

I was told this was simply not possible, because Mercantile MUST carry out in one go the Port design specification as detailed in the Scam Ports & Logistics err sorry SKIL Port IPO document, even if it has to raise more funds to do so - namely 200 acres and 8 berths! Really?


So lets see how that comment stands up to the passage of time and subsequent critical examination:

Some 9 months after the March 2017 date, Mercantile will be well into their 5th year of construction. As at JNPT Terminal 4, the Karanaja operating concession allows a max of 2yrs to complete the marine civil engineering, which ITD is on target to achieve at JNPT. By Mercantile's own admission, they will have completed just 45% of the land reclamation at Karanja and, have a projected £25m of cash remaining at best, with some £12m+ of debt and capital interest payments falling due in early 2018. So where's the cash coming from to complete the other 110 acres of reclamation? Answers on a postcard to the SFO!

Ah but 'The 400m jetty - such a configuration will allow for 600 meters of waterfront (out of a total of 1000 meters) to be available for future expansion.'

As we predicted back in November, there will be no immediate 200 acres that MUST be built in one go to comply with the IPO documentation but, a small 335m lightweight, weather affected, tidal constrained, barge and coaster jetty, with an average 1.8km cargo running distance jetty to storage compound - that will only have 100 acres maximum of hardstanding(because as noted above the rest of the waterfront will be available for future expansion! - AGAIN FRAUD BY FALSE PRESENTATION ON AN EPIC SCALE)


'MPL is to lay 240 piles in total for a 400m jetty' - ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE SCAM SPECIFICATION BEING A SCAM ITSELF AND FURTHER SHORTCHANGING SHAREHOLDERS!

240 piles is equivalent to 60 x 4 rows, which at 6m intervals gives a maximum of 360m of jetty - after allowing at least 25m at the eastern end for the access approach road, this means the operational extent of the jetty will be 335m AT BEST, not 400m.


Some good news - we have finally been able to track down one of the Royal Haskoning Consultant Engineers who was responsible for the site surveys and, Design of the Port Specification and General Arrangement Plans produced for the tender process for the construction of the Port Terminal and, given by Scam Ports and Logistics, err sorry SKIL Ports to Arden Partners for inclusion in their Dec 2013 Analysts Note. A colleague has arranged to call him over the weekend to have a long off the record chat - helpfully, following his involvement with the Karanja project he has been headhunted and moved on to greater responsibilities elsewhere - looking forward to hearing the feedback.


AIOHO/DYOR

[pj 1] 20/7/2017 22:16

''He reckoned " Someone needs to put the CEO in the ground. If he lived in the US rather than Greece it would probably have already happened!''

Some one did try to put Nikhitall Ghandhi in the ground, I wonder why?

[mount teide] 20/7/2017 20:49

As scams go spare a thought for the shareholders of Dryships - a once huge US quoted shipping company, and one of the largest bulk shipping and tanker owners in the World for much of the early part of this decade.

Posted a couple of years ago that this company was being run by a con artist who somehow managed to get a Nasdaq listing for the Company, where he controlled all the voting stock. The accounts did not make any sense, the company was losing hundreds of $millions every year, and was routinely seeing huge sums of cash and ships getting transferred directly into a private shipping Company, OWNED by the Dryships CEO!

It was inevitable it would all end in tears and so it proved - although it has taken two years and not before the CEO had drained every last dime out of the company.

Incredibly, at the height of the shipping boom Dryships had a market cap around £10bn and a share price of $142.

Following a total of 5 reverse stock splits in the last 7 months, any shareholder who owned 1 million shares, 12 months ago, would not be left with 3 full shares now - each with a value of 50 cents! Unbelievable, but true - there is a name for this practice: The Art of the Ultimate Scam! Like a magician the Dryships CEO has managed to make himself incredibly wealthy by turning shareholders $100 notes into tiny fractions of a cent, right before their very eyes!

One hugely disgruntled shareholder closed out a 99.95% loss on the stock yesterday - on the grounds, if he had held on until today, the price would have dropped below the cost of actually selling it! He said he foolishly bought the stock for the dividend - "not my best decision - i got $532 .....only cost me $60,000!" (Bit like investing in MPL then, but without the dividend! Lol!)

He went on to ruefully state "Anyone holding this as an investment after all that's been written about the company deserves to lose every last cent invested because it means no due diligence was done or greed got the better of them." He reckoned " Someone needs to put the CEO in the ground. If he lived in the US rather than Greece it would probably have already happened!'


Another shareholder stated: 'At one time (couple years ago) I had enough shares (way over 100K) to be the 17th largest holder of DRYS. It all pretty much ended for me when the CEO sold the remaining profitable fleet vessels to himself. I knew it was likely over then, but, the damage was done.
Since then he has Reverse stock spit so many times that I would have been driven out to below 1 share. CEO has taken a company that had a chance of recovering and transferred everything that had value to himself. He then started to symmetrically destroy every shareholder. Since he never bothered to Reverse split his preferred shares, it didn't cost him a dime.
So if you think for one minute you could trust this guy with your hard earned sweat and blood, remember, I thought I could get on top of any Reverse split with over 100K shares. I was proved wrong - a very costly mistake.'


Last week saw three law firms launch class action law suits agents Dryships. So far this week another 12 firms have launched lawsuits. The CEO? Latest market rumour is that he is busy working with his lead underwriter on another reverse stock split from the safety of his Athens mansion!

The most worrisome aspect of this sorry story, is that other Greek shipowners are apparently picking up on the dodgy Dryships CEO's quick and dirty ways of raising capital and engaging in toxic financing schemes of their own. It is a huge shame, because this type of racket threatens to render much of the quoted shipping sector as un-investable.

[marvelman] 20/7/2017 16:33

Yes indeed MT...I would like to thank you once again for your huge contribution both to this thread and its followers and also on a personal level for reminding me that I am not the most intelligent person in the world after all:-))

[mount teide] 20/7/2017 15:55

marvelman - Arden's Note has probably drawn in a few small foolish II's who, like the current II's that are sitting on massive paper losses, have almost certainly failed to carry out any meaningful DD worthy of the name.

There is no dream here - this is Bollywood's latest blockbuster - 'Nightmare on Karanja Creek' slowly unfolding before shareholders disbelieving eyes.

[mount teide] 20/7/2017 15:47

We will also make another prediction, that shareholders will not see any further land reclamation than has currently been carried out at Karanja. Forget the 200 acres its not going to happen - you read it here! The clue is in the Prelims for those who know how to read between the lines!

Once a token operation commences sometime next year, Management will change tack and attempt to retain as much cash as possible, for as long as possible, to keep their gravy train running at shareholders expense until the last possible moment.

By Feb 2019 some £18m of loan interest and capital repayments will have fallen due, and £30m in total by the end of 2019 - more than enough to turn the lights out for good.


AIOHO/DYOR

[marvelman] 20/7/2017 15:31

Utterly unbelievable the folly of some to dismiss what is real in order to buy a dream

[igoe104] 20/7/2017 14:35

just looks like someone thrown 2k down the drain, just now.

[igoe104] 20/7/2017 13:46

Mount Teide, how do you see this story ending ?

Running out of money, and being purchased on the cheap ?

[mount teide] 20/7/2017 13:22

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, the SFO and Nomad ?


AIOHO/DYOR

[mount teide] 19/7/2017 09:26

Shareholders IN DENIAL should repeatedly ask themselves one simple question until the penny finally drops:

Why would the Company CHANGE EVERYTHING, to design and build a Terminal to the 'Directors preferred specification', rather than the original, high value Royal Haskoning 'all weather fixed quay wall design'?


If you asked any experienced Port Operator for the most logical and commercial design specification for a bulk and general cargo Terminal at Karanja - i would suggest the only answer you will get, would be a terminal very similar to the Royal Haskoning design on the front page of the Mercantile Website!

When the only PLAUSIBLE answer to the simple question above finally dawns, you will have worked out what is going on here - for someone with Industry experience its a clear as a bell - its why NO PORT OPERATOR WOULD BE INTERESTED IN TAKING OVER THE COMPANY AT ANY PRICE OR, WAS WILLING TO FUND THE ADDITIONAL £37M OF CASH REQUIRED TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON(ASSUMING ANY WERE EVER ASKED - WHICH WE VERY MUCH DOUBT!).

No investment advice offered, inferred or intended.

AIOHO/DYOR

[joshondale] 19/7/2017 05:22

Chart looks good !! Lol

[pbleeds] 19/7/2017 00:14

Where is this Karanja port being built ?

I don't see it here...
hxxps://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Uran,+Navi+Mumbai,+Maharashtra,+India/@18.8431999,72.9475403,5182m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x3be7da47634ac5bf:0x51f27845111437ea!8m2!3d18.8772346!4d72.9283391

and the image on their new website suggests it's going to be quite big.

What am I missing ?

[mount teide] 18/7/2017 13:49

Some clouds can have a silver lining!

A big thanks to MPL management !

Last year after MPL became completely un-investible, we elected to crystallise high 5 figure losses here, and re-invest the proceeds into TAPTICA(TAP): fortuitously, by March 2017 we had made back our losses and since, have seen our investment nearly double.

In MPL our original investments would now be circa 94% down - so thanks MPL, you helped us make the decision to exit and re-ivest in a company with excellent management, where our 'MPL' investment is now worth over 100p and rising fast, rather than just 3.25p!

Proving that L&G can get it right as well as horribly wrong; L&G have been invested in TAP before us and almost certainly have made more money in TAP than their very considerable 8 figure MPL paper losses to date.


AIOHO/DYOR

[mount teide] 18/7/2017 12:07

Hi Waterloo - nothing whatsoever!

In the alleged Everonn money siphoning scam which apparently saw tens of £millions fraudulently transferred into Companies run by Gandhi and his family, Sunny's team bypassed the regulator and went directly to the Special Fraud Office.

After giving AIM Regulation and the NOMAD the common courtesy of referring our complaint first to them, we have taken Sunny's lead and yesterday escalated it, by referring it directly to the UK Special Fraud Office.

As we know from the £25k a month travelling expanses and hotel bills shareholders have been scandalously financing for the last 7 years, some of the Mercantile executive team are not only based but have considerable assets in the UK, and so are well within the reach of the long arm of the law, should it need to take its course.


AIOHO/DYOR

[phowdo] 18/7/2017 11:51

If its such a bargain you do wonder why the actual partners at Arden aren't filling their boots...

Of course the reality is they, like everyone else in the city, know its another foreign AIM PoS that they earn fees from until the money runs out.

[pj 1] 18/7/2017 11:34

That looks like a 'research note' written to allow certain investors an escape route to exit on any spike up imo. I wonder how much Nikhitall Gandhi has paid them to produce it?

''minor slippages''-its a disgrace.