There's an RNS out today at www.investegate.co.uk/bayfield-energy-%28beh%29/rns/update-on-operations-reserves-and-proposed-merger/201212110700031736T
Two problems arise.
Firstly the RNS says that the placing document will be sent to shareholders "by February" - is that Feb 1 or Feb 28? - with an EGM to approve the transaction 14 days later - which takes us to somewhere between Feb 14 and Mar 14. It does not say how long the relisting will take after the EGM - another 2 weeks? another month? So that takes us to somewhere between March 1 and April 14.
This seems to me quite extraordinarily slow. The shares were suspended October 15. That means that the shares will have spent between 5 and 6 months suspended by the time they resume trading. That's long enough to fight a small war.
My holding was not enormous, thank goodness, but I am it still very irritated that my shares are being stuck on hold for so long. Surely it must be possible to get this simple transaction done much quicker?
The second problem is that the RNS includes a table which sets out Bayfield's reserves. Unfortunately whoever drafted it seems not to grasp the basic concept of 1P vs 2P vs 3P reserves and did not get it proof read by someone else who does, so the headings make no sense. They show columns headed 1) "proved" 2) "proved plus probable" and 3) "proved plus probable plus probable" (sic)
and the headings do not line up properly with the columns below them
Of course, this looks like a couple of simple typos and a formatting error. But I am not impressed. Bayfield pays its staff pretty well. So does the PR company. So does the NOMAD/broker. And none of these well paid people spent long enough checking this RNS to spot glaring schoolboy errors which are obvious at first glance?
Are they all asleep? Is that why the trasaction is taking such an unconscionable length of time?
It's simply not good enough. Not good enough at all.
Hi T,
You might find the PDF version of the RNS on the company's own website more readable. ;0) [though it still contains the "proved + probable + probable" error]
I met with the head of the LSE's RNS service some months back and learnt that quite a bit of "munging" goes on between a company issuing an RNS and it working its way through the LSE's systems - including some manual processing/formatting. Quite often tables as presented on the LSE's service do not come out well-formatted, in my experience. I did suggest that a PDF based RNS service (as other exchanges offer) would be more satisfactory, allowing diagrams, photos etc to be included in RNSs, and eliminating the need for format transformations.
I understand that the LSE is reviewing its RNS service.
I am not particularly surprised by the delay to readmission. The only other case like this I have knowledge or was Caledon Resources, when it transformed from being a gold explorer to a coal miner, via a similar takeover deal. It took a similar amount of time to complete and for the shares to be readmitted. Unfortunately, legal and regulatory matters do seem to take forever to complete.
Cheers,
Mark
