Those whose share prices have recently suffered include Corohedge Capital, African Partnerships, Mercury Alpha Capital, Fusion Capital and AM Moolla Group. Unexpected profit warnings, breaches of corporate governance and even accusations of swindling have snuffed out the market euphoria of the late Nineties. Investors are starting to hear of strange goings-on behind closed boardroom doors, like the ugly legal spats between directors at Paradigm Capital and Y2KTech. The liquidation debacle at TopTech, bickering over a controversial oil additive at Whetstone, the extraordinary value destruction at TBB Holdings, the corporate bunfight at Nimbus Foods and the unauthorised fund-raising efforts at Mouldmed are but a few of the developments prompting investors to ask how such group got listed in the first place. What's more, companies hastily patched together to attain critical mass have come apart at the seams, with terrible consequences.
Investors now take company communications with large doses of salt.
They ranged from cold-storage companies to franchised chicken eateries, and offered investors something refreshingly different from the usual fare on the market. Share offerings were greedily snapped up. Too many medium-sized groups pushed their associate companies into the market to fend for themselves. Take a bow Fashion Africa, Shawcell, Metropolis and M-Web. That trend has now reversed.