A UK data company has suspended its shares in London because of potential fraud — just days after announcing it was exploring a New York stock exchange listing.
WANDISCO was valued last week at close to £1billion on the London junior AIM market.
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It said the fraud probe raised doubts not only over its financial position but whether it could continue as a “going concern”.
The Sheffield and Silicon Valley-based company said it had found “significant, sophisticated and potentially fraudulent irregularities” in its accounts.
The alleged fraud related to revenue and purchase orders as represented by “one senior sales employee”.
As a result WANdisco said revenues could now be as low as £7.5million, against its previous forecast of £20million.
It also said it had “no confidence” in its accounts, which have been audited by BDO.
The accounting scandal is a big blow to chief executive David Richards, who discovered the suspected fraud with his financial officer.
Mr Richards wrote a column last year saying that “start-ups are rife with chaos” and advised other entrepreneurs on how to avoid disasters.
He said: “When businesses go from zero to millions, the things that worked for a small company simply don’t in a big one. It creates chaos, as we have seen.”
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Victoria Scholar, analyst at Interactive Investor, said the fraud probe was a “black swan event”, a catastrophic financial occurrence.
She added: “This has the potential to sharply derail WANdisco’s bullish** trajectory.
“Whether this stands in the way of its plans for a dual listing is yet to be seen.”
An insider said that plans for a US listing were now on the back burner.
Harbour storm
THE biggest oil and gas producer in the North Sea said it would have to cut jobs after the Government’s windfall tax “all but wiped out” its profits.
Harbour Energy posted a near 700 per cent jump in profits to £2.1billion for last year, compared with £264million in 2021.
But the company said that after levies it would make just £6.7million.
Boss Linda Cook said it had “driven us to reduce our UK investment and staffing levels”.
Harbour has already pulled a number of projects in the North Sea.
Trend is a worry
THE WANdisco scandal doesn’t help London-listed companies’ reputation for accounting irregularities.
Bloopers at Patisserie Valerie, Carillion, Tesco, Revolution Beauty and Goals Soccer all left shareholders including pension funds massively out of pocket.
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Corporate fraud is rising and needs to be crushed.
Big questions should be asked of WANdisco’s auditors BDO for failing to spot the potentially huge accounting fraud.
Just last year, regulators criticised BDO for the “unacceptable” quality of its audits.
Bookies lose out
Ladbrokes and Coral owner Entain warns tougher online gambling rules will hit its profit margins this year.
Chief financial officer Rob Wood said online revenues fell 2 per cent in the past year but there would have been 3 per cent growth without regulations in the UK and Netherlands.
Entain said total sales rose by 12 per cent to £4.35billion in 2022, helped by the winter World Cup.
The Government is due to release its long-awaited White Paper into the gambling industry this month.
Sales up in Styles
SINGER Harry Styles has helped UK music sales rise for the eighth year in a row.
And for the first time since 1987 vinyl record sales generated higher sales than CDs.
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Overall sales of UK songs rose 4.7 per cent to £1.42billion according to the BPI, the recorded music industry’s trade association.
Sales are also 36 per cent higher than five years ago.
A vinyl revival by big artists led to £119.5million of LP sales and vinyl now accounts for more than half of all sales on physical formats.
Streaming sales continued to rise by 6.3 per cent to £885million with the most-streamed track being As It Was by Styles.
Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits and Go by Cat Burns followed.
The BPI said: “Now we need the music community to unite and create the impetus for further growth so that we can build on an already strong foundation.”
Shell out £10m
THE recently departed boss of Shell pocketed nearly £10million last year after the oil giant benefited from surging energy prices.
Ben van Beurden received a 50 per cent bonus increase, taking his pay to £9.7million.
His bonus jumped after Shell made a record £32.2billion profit in 2022, more than double the previous year, on the back of Russia invading Ukraine.
The UK Shareholders’ Association said the bonus risked bringing “the corporate world into disrepute”.
Talk up UK, Says Aviva CEO
THE boss of insurance company AVIVA has said British businesses “need to stop talking ourselves down” — a day after a rival gloomily complained about a “drift” away from London.
CEO Amanda Blanc said the economy would benefit from a bit more confidence, as well as the Government’s shake-up of rules which should make it easier for Aviva to invest over £25billion into British infrastructure over the next decade.
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“We are really keen to recreate the right environment so that companies like Aviva can thrive and grow,” she said.
A day earlier, LEGAL & GENERAL chief Sir Nigel Wilson accused the UK of being a “low-wage, low-growth, low-productivity economy”.
Ms Blanc was speaking as Aviva boosted shareholder returns with a £300million buyback.
It also promised to pay close to £1billion in dividends this year after facing pressure from activist investor Cevian Capital to lift rewards.
JPM sues Staley on Epstein
EX-Barclay’s boss Jes Staley has been sued by his former employer, Wall Street bank JP Morgan, over his links to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
JP Morgan is itself being sued by Epstein victims who claim Staley facilitated a sex-trafficking ring.
The bank said that Staley failed to disclose his closeness to Epstein.
A lawsuit has found the pair exchanged 1,200 emails, including photos of young women and references to girls as Disney princesses.
JP Morgan, which paid Staley more than £67million between 2006 and 2013, wants to make him liable for penalties it may face in two civil suits.
It said that if the allegations were true “he should be held responsible”, and it was entitled to recover all the “compensation paid to Staley during the time period of his disloyalty”.
“We could not have imagined any of our employees would engage in the type of conduct alleged,” JP Morgan said.
