STOCKSTER You and exceo have a very common problem (thru DNA?) so much so, I feel there is a 'relationship' somewhere. The problem?
Well, you don't need me to point it out, nor does anyone else.
My posts are meant for the non-bigoted, who have open minds so they read what is said, and are not looking for something to pick on.
I have NO personal information what Lumb is up to, or whether gold will rise to $1000. Nowhere do I say that I DO. However I feel a 'possibility' on gold rising as it has been doing for some time by trend (trends are rarely straight lines)
You need to understand the difference between 'possible' and 'probable'.
There is nothing offensive in any of my posts, nor do I attack yours (or anyone's) EVER. I have only ever responded to you, or exceo (are you the same?) in reply to direct comments to me, or about me.
I NEVER attack other's open posts. Everyone is entitled to their view.
I have warned before about Lumb, and here is some more. (but this does not mean we can't POSSIBLY make or recover) money from his transgressions.
People with open, unpolluted minds from personal dislikes will understand my posts, and that is all I care.
ON CHARLES LUMB:
Cruel threats from tyrant in luxury tower
Tony Hetherington, MAIL on SUNDAY
26 March 2006, 10:53am
THE language is unpleasant: 'You are pathetic, a typical smalltimer.' The threats are unnerving: 'I consider you a target and therefore expendable.' And the arrogance of the message is breathtaking: 'You little people fail to realise that people such as myself do not care about you or your lives. I do not care if I break you and your family financially, I could not give a s**t.'
Did these words come from a loan shark perhaps? No, amazingly this was the e-mail received by a shareholder who dared to ask questions when mining investment company Hanover Capital Group lost its place on the junior Alternative Investment Market and embarked on a bewildering series of changes.
And the reply came from the company's boss, South African-born self-proclaimedbnaire Stephen Craig Lumb, who in January announced the purchase of Walton Castle, near Bristol. The asking price was £3.35m.
Lumb, 38, took control of Hanover in March 2003. Three weeks later, the company's professional adviser, Grant Thornton, quit and trading in the shares was suspended. Lumb announced that new advisers would be appointed within days. Three years on, Hanover has no advisers and no share listing and has committed a string of Companies Act offences that look set to spark a Department of Trade and Industry investigation.
Accounts due two years ago have still not been filed. A list of shareholders due at Companies House a month ago is also outstanding. And at one point Hanover disappeared from its registered office and failed to replace its company secretary, who resigned - both breaches of company law.
Since Lumb's appointment to the board, Hanover has failed to hold annual meetings of shareholders.
Instead, the company's 7,000 investors learned through a Press release last year that control of the business had passed to an American firm, St James Capital Holdings, headed by...Stephen Lumb. The American company had owned about five% of Hanover.
Overnight, this leapt to a controlling stake of 66%, paid for not in cash but in restricted shares in St James Capital Holdings itself. Those shares cannot easily be resold and are difficult to value.
Meanwhile, Hanover's mineral rights in Africa, valued at £6.4m, were signed over to another US company, West Africa Gold, in exchange for a 31% stake in the business. Within months, they were simply abandoned. Hanover's stake was valued recently at about £18,000.
Lumb is described as a 'consultant' to West Africa Gold, which has changed its name to Great West Gold. It now claims mineral rights in California and Arizona.
Lumb announced that Hanover's investors would all receive a huge handout of shares in the American company, which would be worth three times the cost of their Hanover shares.
Months later, with no handout in sight, Lumb simply retracted the announcement. Great West Gold similarly announced a distribution of assets.
Mining rights would be hived off to five new British companies, with shares for everyone, to be traded in London by the end of January. But on March 10, a fresh announcement put back trading to the end of this month.
It is unclear how the new shares will be traded. They stand no chance of a full Stock Exchange listing. But Lumb has ambitions for a mini-stock market of his own. He has registered about 100 companies with himself as director.
All of which is no help at all to the locked-in minority shareholders in Hanover Capital Group.
Lumb told Financial Mail: 'Quite frankly, we have done the right thing as far as I am concerned for the Hanover shareholders.' The 'right thing' seems to be an offer of shares in Lumb's other company, St James Capital Holdings. There is no timetable, though.
However badly his shareholders may have fared, Lumb himself enjoys living the high life, with a luxury flat in St James's Square, central London, as well as his newly purchased Walton Castle.
He reportedly owns two private jets, three helicopters and a 68ft yacht. In contrast, though, stories persist of bad debts. Top people's party organiser Red Snapper is still waiting to be paid for caviar and champagne dished out at Lumb's birthday party last April.
The company says it never talks about its clients, but sources put the unpaid bill at about £8,000. Lumb is unabashed, saying that he is 'in dispute' with Red Snapper and has 'no time to be a flashy playboy'.
He did find time, though, to fire off another of his e-mails to property tycoon Vincent Tchenguiz, blaming him for leaking the debt tales - something that Tchenguiz denies.
'My security team has been briefed,' he wrote, and Tchenguiz could expect 'major due diligence' into his private life.
With a Department of Trade and Industry inquiry apparently imminent, Lumb should expect to face more than a few questions himself, very soon
OR, there is this
Lumb plum in the firing line again
THE mystery surrounding Stephen Lumb, the playboy chairman of St James Holdings, deepens. He is already facing allegations of being a bad payer of debts, and last week investors in Hanover, a shell company controlled by Lumb, claimed he was a bad businessman, too.
Among complaints at Hanover was the allegation that he had failed to distribute the company’s assets to shareholders as he had stated in public announcements.
There’s little the 7,000 private investors could do. One, who decided to tackle Lumb directly, was threatened with legal action, and told in an e-mail that St James Holdings would be taking control, so it didn’t matter anyway.
Lumb insists he is being unfairly targeted. He said:
“It is success, happiness and huge wealth that counts to me. The jealous, pitiful and unsuccessful unfortunates of this world love to attempt to bring down those they envy, but they’ll never succeed.”
But, as I said, most of you are not deciding whether to 'get in'
You are already IN. I am merely saying there could well be coming up an opportunity to 'GET OUT'. (you have just to decide 'at what point'.
If any of you wish to take it any other way and twist my words - Be my guest. I do not let petty bickering, and cynical comment rule my life. Those who do have the problem, not I.
No hard feelings 'HAVE A NICE DAY'
