Bouleversee wrote:Back to the subject: A poster on the ADVFN discussion board said the following re the IRV collapse:
"A few posters here don’t seem to have understood that USA hedge funds owned a massive amount of shares they also shorted this company so voted against to win on the shorts it was a no win situation for shareholders."
I have to confess that I rarely check out the shorting situation re my too numerous holdings but if this is correct I should clearly pay more attention to this aspect. It is appalling that such activity could hasten the demise of a company and maybe the petition I saw mentioned the other day to ban shorting of AIM shares should be extended to the wider market. I wonder how much attention the institutions pay to this. Another reason for getting out of individual shares perhaps but perhaps not into Coltrane. I must look them up. I think they were described as an asset manager but they won't be getting mine.
With regard to shorting of IRV, the significant shorting effectively ended at the end of last year (Dec 20th based on the graph presented in short tracker). After that date, the shorting levels fell to 0.58% by the start of this month. See the graph here:-
https://shorttracker.co.uk/company/GB0001528156/Looking at the list of shorters ( same link as above) , I don't see Coltrane's name.
What really did IRV in....their poor programme management - taking on projects they didn't understand ( EFW), perhaps simply to boost revenue numbers. Generally, low margin work allows no wriggle room when even a single project goes wrong.
I didn't think it would come to administration tbh - but one thing that I know rang alarm bells ( and I allowed to slide) was their inability ( unknowing or more likely unwilling) to state the cost to completion on energy for waste.
Who do I blame? ...the bloke who bought the shares and then ignored the warnings...