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Langbar waiting for its $294m
Eric Barkas City Editor IF, when you put the cat out tonight, you stumble across $294m, please send it on to Stuart Pearson.
He'd like the money, as would Langbar International, the cash shell company he runs from Leeds which has suspended its shares on the Aim market.
The money is said to have left Brazil and ought to be deposited with the merchant bank ABN Amro's Netherlands office.
But nobody can be sure.
The cash could be in a holding account or a nominee account. It could be in the middle of the Atlantic between South America and Europe.
Maybe ABN has it already but, such is the mega-billion scope of its operations, it wouldn't notice.
It's a paper trail for the missing millions. Langbar has appointed independent auditors to track down the money. The result could be known in days or weeks, depending on how the trail unfolds.
In the meantime, Langbar is off the list and, in more than 10 years of writing about the City, this scribe has never had such an enthusiastic following for his outpourings.
A lot of private punters have put a lot of money into Langbar. So have institutions, including Merrill Lynch, Gartmore and Henderson, who you would think would have nailed down the cash before they invested.
If the small guys get it wrong it's sad, but part of the game. If the big guys get stuffed there will be hell to pay.
Once $294m was found to be wandering the world, Langbar had a problem. That problem was compounded by the decision of its previous chief Mariusz Rybak – a Canadian living in Monaco – to sell down his holding from 44 per cent to just under 20 per cent.
The shares bombed on fears that Mr Rybak knew something that nobody else knew. Mr Pearson took the decision to roll the problems up, seek suspension, and get in the independents to sort it out.
"I'm taking the moral high ground, I'm not believing anybody," he says. "I can't believe the money has disappeared."
Maybe part of the problem is transferring assets from the struggling economy of Brazil to Europe. Getting out straight cash can be difficult because it could undermine the economy – hence the bank-to-bank deal between Brazil and ABN.
A bit of history is required here. Langbar grew from Crown Corporation, an investment company that raised money but found precious little in which to invest.
Thanks largely to dealing in public finance initiative contracts in Argentina and subscriptions from more than 2,000 Jewish settlers in that country it raised lots of cash.
The current cash pile is estimated at some 360m, putting the suspended share price of 50p at a big discount to net asset value.
Sums of this kind drew in investors. The big questions are: is the cash there and, if so, can we get at it?
There seems little doubt that the cash is real. Getting it is the problem.
It's hard enough to do border-to-border deals in the EU. Langbar is a smorgasbord of continents.
The company is registered for tax reasons in Bermuda, has most of its assets in Brazil via Argentina, its former chief is a Canadian resident in Monaco, it holds board meetings in Barcelona, is looking to do property deals in Spain and Portugal – and it is run by Mr Pearson from rural Stainburn.
It could be, as Mr Pearson argues, that dealing with developing economies can be a lottery. If so, expect more of the same.
Langbar has another $360m in Brazil that is primed for its southern European property venture. Rather than a cash transfer of the $294m which the company would use to reward shareholders or make acquisitions, the $360m would go towards the Iberian property deal.
Asset swapping between Brazil and its colonisers in Portugal and – by virtue of clout –- Spain is easier than getting your hands on cash.
This story has a long way to run. And Langbar has agreed a shares deal for the Bradford marketing company Real Affinity. If the shares stay depressed then this deal could be revisited.
eric.barkas@ypn.co.uk
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