UFO Info Week-End

That is the nature of the system

That is the nature of the system.”The decision means that all regulatory action against Shell and its former chairman is now at an end in the UK and the US. Last year, the FSA fined the company £17m over the affair.The investigation into whether Sir Philip had committed a breach of civil law by misleading investors over the size of Shell’s reserves began in March last year – two months after the oil giant had stunned the market by disclosing that it had overstated reserves by 3.9 billion barrels.In April last year, Shell published a devastating report commissioned from an independent US law firm revealing that Sir Philip had been warned on several occasions over a two-year period that the market was being misled. Those enquiries have reached a conclusion and the FSA will be taking no further action.”An FSA spokesman said: “The enforcement division carried out an investigation and made a recommendation for action to the RDC but the RDC decided that no action should be taken. The main City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, ignored the advice of its own specialist enforcement staff yesterday by announcing that no further action would be taken against Sir Philip Watts, the disgraced ex-chairman of Shell, over the oil giant’s reserves reporting scandal. The FSA’s Regulatory Decisions Committee (RDC) reached the verdict despite a recommendation from the organisation’s enforcement division that action be taken against Sir Philip, who was ousted from Shell last year after admitting that its oil reserves had been overstated by a quarter or almost 4.5 billion barrels.
In a brief statement, the regulator said: “The Financial Services Authority has been pursuing enquiries into the roles of certain individuals in the mis-statement of Shell’s hydrocarbon reserves. He told the court he was not drunk and did not, as Mr Wood testified, slur any of his words. Sir Tom and Mr Gorman deny any wrongdoing, saying there was no agreement with The Gadget Shop shareholders to buy the Birthdays chain.The case continues..

Mr Wilkinson and Mr Wood refused to sell shares to Mr Green.Michael Crystal QC, for Mr Wilkinson and Mr Wood, put it to Sir Tom: “You would have known about Lord Grabiner’s involvement with Arcadia by August 2003, wouldn’t you? That was when you were told by Lord Grabiner that you could do what you were planning to do [with Birthdays].”Sir Tom denied drunkenly discussing the £60m potential acquisition of the Birthdays chain with Mr Wood in the toilets of a nightclub in Monaco. Mr Wilkinson and Mr Wood claim the Birthdays chain was snapped up by Sir Tom behind their backs in the summer of 2003. They are suing for their share in what the combined businesses would have been worth, estimated at £100m.After Sir Tom’s investment in The Gadget Shop in April 2002, Mr Green was given another opportunity to invest in it Sir Tom asked investors to agree to bring Mr Green on board. “I thought Mr Green could bring his expertise of sourcing in the Far East to the group,” he said yesterday. During cross-examination of Sir Tom, who is accused of unlawfully buying the Birthdays chain for himself when the business should have been bought through The Gadget Shop, the court heard how Lord Grabiner is also chairman of Arcadia group, the retail empire belonging to the billionaire Philip Green, who, it was alleged yesterday, made an offer to buy The Gadget Shop from its founders in April 2002, before Sir Tom invested in the business.

The £2m offer from Mr Green, a close friend of Sir Tom, was rejected by the two founders of the chain, Andrew Hobbs and Jonathan Elvidge, it was said in court.
Peter Wilkinson, the founder of Freeserve, and Jon Wood, a star City trader, later that month invested in The Gadget Shop, along with Sir Tom and Chris Gorman. Lord Grabiner QC, who is defending Sir Tom Hunter against a £100m High Court action from fellow shareholders in the failed The Gadget Shop, was dragged into the case yesterday, when it was alleged he advised the retail entrepreneur that the acquisition of another business, the Birthdays chain, through his West Coast Capital investment business was above board. He also owns Caudwell Communications, a fixed-line telecoms business, which has been up for sale for some time.Mr Caudwell said he would delay any final decision in respect of a sale of Caudwell Communications, which operates the Homecall residential brand, in the light of his decision to sell his holding company.. When people see our fourth-quarter figures this year and first-quarter figures for next year, they will speak for themselves.” Mr Caudwell added: “Mobile phones will become increasingly important and an increasingly central part of people’s lives. They will be incredible devices.”The spiralling level of competition in the mobile phone market was heightened again yesterday when the German-owned T-Mobile announced that more than £1bn of investment in the UK to upgrade its network for mobile internet traffic and an extra 300 stores, creating about 1,100 jobs.Mr Caudwell has diversified his interests away from mobile phone retailing, where he competes against Carphone Warehouse and, increasingly, large supermarkets including Tesco.He owns 20:20 Logistics, a handset distribution business which operates in the UK, Spain, Ireland and Dubai, and plans to open in two more European countries.

Other businesses within the Caudwell Holdings group include Dextra Solutions, an accessories distributor, MPRC, a mobile phone repair business, and Caudwell Logistics, which provides warehouse and transport facilities for retailers including Asda and Bargain Booze. Getting out because things are getting tough couldn’t be further from the truth We are very, very excited about the future. It was very, very expensive to run a mobile phone in those days. Now it costs a fraction of that and in relative terms, after inflation, it’s even less. Mobile phones are now at a level where everyone can have one.”Mr Caudwell denied that the fall in price of mobile phones reflected a level of competition in the marketplace that had prompted him to sell up.”Absolutely not Our businesses are booming more than ever.

Although Mr Caudwell has not ruled out a flotation of his remain-ing businesses, he said he would prefer a sale, probably to a private-equity fund.Mr Caudwell started his mobile phone business in 1986, buying 26 phones from Motorola at a wholesale price of £1,400 each, which he then retailed at £2,500 each. The lack of demand for mobile phones and general cynicism about their usefulness meant it took him eight months to sell them, eventually offloading them to a variety of unlikely early adopters including taxi drivers, plumbers and television repairmen.”The tariffs were something like 30p a minute and if you spoke just for a few seconds you were charged for the whole minute There were just two networks, Vodafone and Cellnet. I want to sail round the world, continue with my charity work, and I’d really love to spend more time with my family. When you put all of these together and the hectic lifestyle I’ve had over the past 30 years, that’s why I’m selling.”Mr Caudwell sold Singlepoint, a customer billing business, for £405m to Vodafone in 2003. “I’ve now got a group of companies with the best entrepreneurial management in the industry I can’t be hands on anymore. I’ve filled all the gaps and I’ve got all the people in the right places.”I’ve been driving various businesses for 30 years and I’ve never really been able to have any time off. The group includes the 350-strong Phones4U mobile phone retail chain that Mr Caudwell said yesterday was witnessing a 30 per cent increase in like-for-like sales.