UFO Info Week-End

It threatened to withdraw its support and Wigmore and its stockbroker were forced into a frantic cash chase

It threatened to withdraw its support and Wigmore and its stockbroker were forced into a frantic cash chase. They raised the necessary £2.2m, but at a terribly dilutive cost. New shares were sold at just 0.1p with Square Mile, an investment company based in the British Virgin Islands, coming to the rescue by picking up stock. Wigmore should survive but it has lost the ebullient image that once made it such a promising player on the small-cap stage.Square Mile, run by Leo Knifton and Nigel Weller, is a relatively recent arrival.

I first came across it when it took a seemingly supportive stake in Constellation, the recruitment business once known as Upton & Southern.Landround has also lost its get-up-and-go image. I don’t think there is any danger of its bankers threatening to pull the plug. But for a high flyer, with an impeccable record, to suffer such an unexpected setback will rankle with investors for years. The stock market was expecting another impressive profit display but the travel promotion group plunged into the red – to the tune of £26,000 at the halfway stage. The corresponding figure last year was an £896,000 profit.Not surprisingly, the shares dived At the start of the year they were comfortably above 400p On the results they dropped 120p to a year’s low of 222.5p.

A miscalculated travel voucher promotion caused much of the damage, emphasising the impact a relatively modest misadventure can have on a small company. Landround will, I am sure, recover but it will have difficulty recapturing the support of small-cap followers.Another small-cap I have featured is starting to move along the recovery road. Mind you, Hartford has taken a long time to get its act together. It suffered a hangover after it acquired, offering the no pain, no gain portfolio a handsome profit in the process, a restaurant company called Montana; and even the subsequent take-over of the Jamies wine bars chain failed to offer any immediate comfort.

But the group, which has ditched its restaurants and is concentrating on bars, has just rolled out its first-ever profit. It was only £32,000 for six months but Investec, the company’s stockbroker, has been sufficiently encouraged to raise its year’s profit forecast to £400,000.. One of the drawbacks to looking after your own money as a private investor is that you have to try to understand some of the more complicated corporate guff that comes through the letterbox (if it can fit) Actually, I don’t mean guff at all. I mean very important and significant documents relating to takeovers and other corporate activity that you as a small shareholder need to take seriously, because it affects your wealth, even though your own tiny insignificant shareholding in the companies concerned is neither here nor there and you may not have a clue as to what it all means anyhow. My poor postie had to lug these vast tomes to my door and, while I did my best to penetrate the corporatese, most of it went into the recycling bin.Now, it seems, it is all over, and something called Songbird, the Morgan Stanley-backed consortium behind a £7.1bn recommended bid for Canary Wharf, revealed recently that it had received acceptances representing 65.5 per cent of the share capital of the London Docklands developer.I can at least feel that I am not trying to dodge the feet of two elephants fighting, but I’m not so clear as to what may happen next.