Company Law: Major Shareholder is Opaque Offshore Company

[Cortana]

Does anyone know how Company Law applies to major shareholders in AIM Companies?
The specific company I'm interested in is Mediazest whose major shareholder is a vehicle called City and Claremont Capital Assets Limited (CCCAL).

The thing is CCCAL is very secretive and I've no idea where it is domiciled, who its major shareholders are, or who its directors are.
It uses the domain name CCCAL.NET for email addresses and I've tried emailing the only address at that domain but I'm getting no reply.

If the business was UK domiciled then I could check the Companies House website but I, and apparently, no-one else knows where it is domiciled.
It does have a registered Guernsey address but no name associated with it.

Are London listed companies not supposed to be more transparent than this due to money laundering regulations? How are shareholders, or potential shareholders, supposed to do basic due diligence if the major shareholder in their company is hiding behind an anonymous offshore shell.

I guess I'm questioning the legality of this but also any advice on getting information on inscrutable offshore companies would be very welcome.

TIA.

[staffordian]

Having seen how easy it appears to be for relatively transparent companies to, shall we say, put shareholders' interests at the back of the queue, e.g. Quindell, possibly Cloudtag etc, I would be very wary of involvement with any AIM company which has an extremely opaque major shareholder.

Regardless of what the law might say, it seems that any AIM listed company which is so inclined can do more or less whatever it wishes with little or no comeback.

Staffordian

[Clitheroekid]

There's some discussion on the advfn thread - http://uk.advfn.com/stock-market/london ... tnav_i_0_t Although it relates to a company called E P & F Capital, there seem to be a lot of common threads with Mediazest, including a common director, Lance O'Neill. It would seem that CCCAL is also a shareholder there, and that other people have been asking the same question as you. I've not read the thread, but there may be something of interest there.

Unfortunately, it's common practice for companies to have shareholders who are offshore companies. There is no easy way of discovering who owns the beneficial interest in the companies for the very good reason that they were often specifically incorporated in obscure jurisdictions for the specific purpose of hiding the identity of the true owners.

If the shareholding is over 25% then the new rules that came in to force this year requiring details of `persons with significant control' may help, but this obviously doesn't apply here, as the company only owns around 15%.

[Cortana]

Thanks Clitheroe. I was not aware of the 25% rule There is the obvious potenti.al therefore to have undisclosed concert parties. The Chinese frauds for example have loads of big shareholders that no-one can track down. The general thinking is they are all controlled by one guy but its impossible to prove this. I think the whole thing is farcical.

Yes the advfn thread is where the discussion is between a small group of shareholders on this issue on EP&F Capital which used to be e-Primefinancial.
It delisted over 12 years ago and since then the directors have blatantly siphoned the company's cash (directly and indirectly) into their own pockets. The minority hareholders have been 100% disenfranchised, completely helpless. All we can do is sit back and watch it all happen. We can't work out why CCCAL are allowing this to happen but we now have deep suspicions as to the ownership of CCCAL.

[Cortana]

Who is the policeman for unlisted companies in the UK? If you think a company is guilty of some kind of wrong doing who do you contact? The company does not have a NOMAD. There is AIM regulation but the company is not listed on AIM. So who?

[Cortana]

OK I managed to obtain some further info from a fellow shareholder.
To paraphrase "No one looks after the graveyard of unlisted shares" so its really up to yourself to make concerns know to the directors, use your own solicitors, complain to FCA with concrete evidence (good luck with that!!), publicise the issue using social media or try and get an article published etc

Bottom line is you lose a lot of rights and a lot of protection when you hold shares in an unlisted business.