Is It Ever Justified to Take £10,000 to Cast a Listed Company in a Rosy Light?

Comments

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   Phil

   8 December 2015, 02:47

   No never.

   You may think this gift obtained in such a way benefited this girl. But the gift never came for nothing, it cost the world another honest man.

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   wildrides

   8 December 2015, 03:56

   Yep …………. but only if you give it to me , so I can buy LGO shares while they are cheap .

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   wildrides

   8 December 2015, 04:06

   For your info :-
   Barclays Stockbrockers trading systems are down today ……. no trading on line or by phone , however you can trade “at best” ONLY via the phone . They have no Idea when they will get it fixed but when they do expect a big surge in trading volumes . At the moment they are using paper , pencil and abbacus . They are hand writing all trades at best to input them when the systems are back up . Trades made wont appear on your account until the systems are back up , but they are made at best within a few minutes of your placing the order . Since they are one of the bigger outfits expect some unusual pricing in the market and a few bargains caused by low volumes .

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   Simple Moving Avarice

   8 December 2015, 04:29

   I can see at least two problems with Malcolm’s hypothetical strategy. Firstly, I am sure this is more than one ‘deserving’ case for the £10,000 who has been deprived of a treatment. So who gets it? Or do you have to continue giving dubious quality advice forever?

   Secondly, if this is the correct strategy to use for you then in theory it would be the right strategy for anyone else. Basic game theory right there. So you would have to defend everyone taking PR bribes for stories provided that the money went to (arbitrarily chosen) deserving cases. This is the world you are advocating.

   Ironically, since NICE already uses a very rigorous method to try to decide how to parcel out treatments when there are more needs than money, you probably should in fact give all the ill-gotten gains directly to NICE to be 100% altruistic.

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   Phil

   8 December 2015, 05:12

   Weak balance sheets are being well and truly spanked this morning and even AVN is showing some weakness. Wouldn’t it be irony if the one thing than kicked off the inevitable rout of AVN was the use of just one to many ramp RNS

   My case of getting out of the hydro-carbons by selling BG don’t look to good. Any of you old enough to remember this one – Keep going well, keep going Shell, you can be sure of Shell. Those old days, golden days, when Lenigas was a wee bairn, back on that prison farm working his fingers to the bone shearing sheep.

   I am short AVN et al

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   johng

   8 December 2015, 06:22

   I never take seriously anything written by a ‘promoter’. I used to read Malcy’s blog on a regular basis… BUT as soon as it was exposed that he takes cash from the companies he is bullish about ….. I stopped reading his stuff.

   What was really disgusting about his writings is that he NEVER declared that he was on the payroll of those that he writes his bullish blogs about. That is pretty shite and underhanded bollox.

   Notes by proactive and Edison also have to be read with serious reservation but at least they declare they are funded by the companies they cover.

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   DUCK AND DIVE

   8 December 2015, 06:24

   City PR may be rotten to the core but not all PR people should be tarred with the same brush.

   As a former (non-financial) PR adviser myself, I can assure you that I have at times insisted on disseminating bad news when companies would have preferred to say nowt until I told them to do it the right (my) way or get another PR consultant. And in the days when I did product PR, I have more than once refused to issue a press release on a new product which I thought was crap. I have also insisted on numerous occasions that CEOs or chairmen should make themselves available to talk to the media about bad news instead of staying in the background.

   I would never allow a client – even though most were private companies – to try to suppress bad news. My mantra was always to be pre-emptive and on the front foot so that we stood a fair chance of mitigating any reputational damage instead of firefighting a media scoop.

   While the City may be full of fast-talking slickers, most private companies are not. Company leaders are not necessarily well-educated and nor do they understand the needs of the media. A good PR practitioner will simply field and channel media enquiries while also having commercial awareness. He should also be able to spell and write the Queen’s English – which skills are usually lacking in a company’s senior managers (and in many journalists, come to that).

   And while the liquid lunch may still be the order of the day among City PR types, it has all but disappeared from most branches of PR, thanks primarily to the arrival of the internet and e-mail.

   Back to the moral dilemma and the child must lose – unless it’s your own child since most fathers would lie, steal, kill or die to save their own children.

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   J P Spaghetti

   8 December 2015, 06:27

   Personally, I think Tom is bang on the money here. It’s an interesting – though bleak and heart-wrenching – example, but truth and integrity should always override all other considerations if for no other reason than ending up on a slippery slope (we know you of all people know that Malc and appreciate it’s just a discussion!). Where would it end? However well intentioned, it would almost certainly prove to be short-lived as punters would no doubt ‘click’ quite quickly. Better to reap the benefits of honest and frank analysis and donate a fraction of those. Although they may be smaller initially they would (hopefully) be more sustainable.

   Besides, what’s to say that an investor who lost out because of factual omissions wasn’t also in this game to raise funds for a suffering child? In this internet-driven age, perhaps one based in a country without socialised health care.