Electronic Game Card, Inc (fka EGMIQ)

[Chance To See]

I was reading an article over on the THMR board about a distressed debt investment firm and it occurred to me that if Shep Boone is good at his job (“Specializes in analysis of undervalued securities and distressed debt”) he might be in demand now and may have left Ingalls & Snyder for a better job – which would mean less likelihood of his needing to sell his EGMI shares.

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=34553166

From the article:

“In March 2008 Matlin Patterson led a $1.35 billion rescue of Thornburg Mortgage. David Matlin and Mark Patterson, the distressed securities specialists who founded the investment firm, sit on Thornburg’s board.

“Now the buzz is that Flagstar and Thornburg will merge, the TARP-backed bank will finance the troubled mortgage business and Matlin Patterson will sell its cheaply bought shares at an impressive profit. This is a complicated process that can backfire—you have to get on both boards, merge or otherwise link the businesses, have at least one of them obtain cheap government money, and then wait till the stock recovers. But if the model works, Matlin Patterson can do more deals of the same kind.

‘It has the capital, having raised a $5 billion new fund to invest in distressed companies. That was in 2007, but Matlin Patterson did not invest then because distressed securities were not sufficiently discounted. It started to invest in 2008 and will likely find other opportunities in 2009.

“A new report from consulting firm Celent points that since traditional sources of finance are no longer available or too expensive, financial companies may find alternative sources as private equity firms allocate a higher percentage of their funds to such investments.”