UK 02:05 Friday, 9 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
In the light of the controversy over Andrew "Piggy" Austin’s deal with Equities First Holdings LLC and the questions over margin calls, your intrepid reporter met up with Tom Winnifrith on Tuesday to have a look at the shareholder register in Bristol. If Tom thinks this demonstrates what an exciting life he must lead, mine must be even more so as I had to travel further, to Tom’s home town! What did we find?
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Comments
alcira16247
Nigel
Excellent work!
Trying to get to the truth over this nasty business is proving harder than extracting blood out of a stone.
Thanks to all the guy’s at ShareProphets for continuing the fight to shame Igas, Jefferies and ‘Piggy’ into displaying a degree of honesty and integrity to show long suffering shareholders a token of respect by coming clean over this matter!
turbograndad
Good work boys, I wonder if anybody responsible as named , will stir from their tauper, procrastination, and crony cronic inertia, on this ongoing matter.
Best of luck.
OPOPJ
Strange indeed! I have just looked at the ‘Investor Relations’ section of the IGas website which shows Mr Austin as the 4th largest shareholder in the business, holding 10,975,628 shares. This figure has been updated very recently, as it includes the 4464 shares allotted to him and reported in the RNS announcement of 23/01/15. Yet the share register, you say, shows Mr Austin as holding only 300,000 shares. That is some discrepancy!
May I suggest that you raise this matter with John Bryant, the IGas plc Senior Independent Non-exec Director, and ask him to investigate and confirm which number is correct. I first knew John in his Midlands Electricity days more than 20 years ago when we worked on major energy from waste projects. He is an astute individual, and a man (in my estimation) of honesty and integrity. Also, with a holding of only 59,045 shares his independence should not be in doubt. I would be surprised if he could not shed some light on this issue.
hammer69
Nigel,
I think you’ll find EFH, as an overseas institution, would only have to disclose any shareholding after reaching 5%, 10% and every additional 1% thereafter.
A good recent example of this would be Fidelity of the US announcing when it went below 5% in Quenron, with it then being free to sell the rest without any further DTR notification.
H69
nigel somerville
Hammer – I think as far as AIM Rule 17 goes the threshold is 3%. In any case, I believe it is the domicile of the issuer, not the position holder which governs the disclosure rules. Do please correct me if I’m not quite on the money with that, though!
As things stand, DTR 5 – policed by the FCA – is actually not anything like as watertight as AIM Rule 17 which is policed by AIM Regulation. Which is probably why neither is policed at all….