Previously Crown Corp, CCO. Institutional interest now and the Co has changed it's name for a fresh beginning. Still very speculative, but what isn't? but just a case of investing the huge amount of Cash sitting in a Brazilian bank a/c. There's no real difference here to an emerging markets investment fund apart from the obvious and very attractive discount to NAV of approx 75% !!!!!

....er just realised!....told you I wasn't the brightest....does that mean that the MM's will manipulate the share price around 78 until the deal is done?

I think some were expecting news of the investment of the funds, but this is not going to happen overnight. We know the money is there and is now "safe" so the risk has been taken out of this investment. I still predict a sp of over 1.50 within the next few mths, if not sooner. Some holders are sitting on good profits especially those from the placing and its never wrong to take a profit especially if its so quick and this has kept the price down but As I have said in the past, true value will be seen soon Its a non-brainer!!

Yesterday I was close to being carried along by the story and taking a modest position for long enough for the value to out.

What stopped me was the number and size of the trades going through around the bid price. As any experienced trader will observe, you can't tell what is going on from Buys and Sells because there is a party on either side of the transactions, BUT

my reading of it was that there is a serious overhang being unloaded and until that has cleared there is little chance of the price rising.

The cash may be real but if there are some distressed shareholders unloading into strength they'll have to be cleared before there is any point in committing to this one.

Must be clearing then, price has recovered 6p already from this am

and another penny, thats 10% you would have gained. This co's sp is very volatile and I don't think it's worth trying to read anything into the movements, whats clear is that they have net assets worth 3x the sp = very undervalued. Someone will notice before long and pounce.

Calm down rob. My screen says 5% down on the day. Please don't post here without trying to forward the debate. There's a well known BB across the road for making noise.

edit: Now 7% and with a spread widened to 7% this is not the time to get in.

IMHO there was absolutely nothing new in the results and there is still uncertainty as to the extraction and use of the funds from Brazil.

1 thing thats nagging me, if they have all this cash and access to at least some of it, why did they raise 4m recently for working capital and then why in buying RAF are they buying it with shares not cash - its only 2.6m (less than 1% of what they claim to have). At least they are only paying 0.39p per share (some RAF buyers yesterday got shafted)

Can anyone shed any light

Fundy, I've got some of these as a punt. Like you I am totally baffled why they need to raise funds when they've got all this cash. Only answer I can come up with is that the money hadn't been released from Brazil in time. Bit lame I know, but no idea what is going on. Must be the strangest company on the LSE!

pth

Bribes ;)

Presumably they cannot get their hands on the cash in Holland at ABM Amro yet.

Fundamentalist.
The placing was made in August when the company was still Crown Corporation, and before the money had been released from Banco do Brasil.
I don't think there is anything fishy about the Brazil deal. The fact is that a lot of companies have invested there because of the very high interest rates on cash deposits while the local currrency, the Real, has appreciated over 50% against the US$ over the last 2 years.
As for the shares v cash acquisition for RAF, I doubt that the RAF external directors would have recommended the cash offer. It is at the lower end of the average trading price of the stock for this year and cash would have been final. An all share deal offers the RAF shareholders the opportunity to share in the LGB upside since the nominal value of the shares is only a third of the NAV value.
Think about it, which would you have preferred, as a RAF shareholder?

Langbar set for huge property deal
But Real Affinity has to be dealt with first
Eric Barkas
City Editor
LANGBAR INTERNATIONAL, the investment company, expects to seal a $200m property acquisition by the end of November.
The deal should have been the showpiece when Langbar reported interim results yesterday. In the event, the show was stolen by the company's first corporate acquisition the more modest 2.6m in shares agreed for Real Affinity, the Bradford-based marketing company.
The Real Affinity deal was flagged up in Friday's Business Post. Stuart Pearson, who runs Langbar out of Leeds, has bigger fish to fry.
The property deal is likely to be in Portugal or Spain and will involve a 150-acre site including commercial and residential property, hotels and a golf course. There's a limit to what Mr Pearson can say, given that regulators have told him to get Real Affinity sorted before he can move on to the next announcement.
If you look at Langbar you need a degree in corporate finance, such is the complexity of the history.
It all began with Crown, an investment company incorporated in Bermuda for tax reasons. Crown had a lot of big plans but never did a big deal. Instead, it spent money chasing deals that never came off.
But it did have some cash. Mr Pearson, a former Baker Tilley accountant in Leeds, says he was invited on board, injected some of his own corporate boutique interests, and ended up as chief executive. He changed the name to Langbar.
The company's strategy is to invest in small businesses, help them to grow then spin them off. There are several current investments, of which Real Affinity is potentially the biggest.
Langbar is paying for the Bradford company in shares in a deal worth some 2.6m. Mr Pearson says Real Affinity management had lined up several potential acquisitions but was previously prevented from following through by the small size and even smaller share price of the company.
He says with Langbar's financial muscle he expects to make an acquisition within the next month which will double Real Affinity's size. A second purchase is pending before Christmas. Real Affinity floated on the Aim market in 2001, specialising in direct and web-based marketing.
Failure to integrate acquisitions and lack of financial controls sent it into the red. Full year results out yesterday showed the deficit to be 2m before tax but after exceptional costs of around 1m.
The headcount has been halved to 60. The head office is now a more modest building. Yet the company has a raft of impressive clients almost all of them FTSE 100 or big international players like Tesco and VW/Audi.
Under Langbar, Real Affinity will de-list. Mr Pearson says he expects management to grow the business quickly. Then Langbar will spin it off back to the public domain.
"What we've really given it is the currency to go out and build this business."
So what of Langbar? It keeps its Bermuda registration as a legacy of Crown but the operations end is in Yorkshire. It has some 360m of cash, mainly inherited from Crown. Included in that is around 160m recently repatriated from Brazil. Crown raised share money there and had PFI contracts. There's another 190m still to be repatriated.
Hence the property deals. Brazil has long-standing relations with Portugal and, because of its proximity and influence, Spain. If Mr Pearson can't get the physical cash out, he'll get it by asset transfer to property. His plan is that Langbar will end up with a marketing company and a property company to spin off. Add to that a third company he won't talk about but on which he is is prepared to spend $250m of Brazil money.
In the end, the ambition is modest. Langbar shareholders will have shares in three companies and Langbar itself will revert to being Mr Pearson's little boutique.
Langbar's half year figures yesterday showed taxable profits of 18.2m. The comparative period showed 146.5m but was influenced by one-off contracts in South America bought and sold by Crown.
eric.barkas@ypn.co.uk
01 October 2005

http://www.atlanticogolfehotel.com/

Is this the daftest share? Worth 4 times the sp in cash!!!! when are people going to wake up to this fact.

Rob Hi,

One day real soon :)

Cheers,
PM

Langbar International - SPECULATIVE BUY
Companies: LGB RAF
03/10/2005

A company with a market value of 114 million that has just reported net assets more than three times that level at 357 million should not see its shares drop 15 per cent.

Nevertheless, this fate affected Langbar International when chairman Stuart Pearson delivered a 14.77 million interim pre-tax profit for this investment company, previously called Crown Corporation. He reckons last weeks 12p fall in the share price to 66p reflects profit-taking by those who bought the shares when the corporate financier joined the venture in early June. At that point the shares, after initially doubling from their 370p starting price, stood at 11.5p.

Previous chief executive Marius Rybak had sold the groups interests in Argentinian construction contracts for 280 million in term deposits with Brazils central bank. Clearly the market believed Crown would be unable to realise them. Last week though Pearson confirmed that he has arranged to use $200 million of the funds to develop a property venture in Portugal and transferred the remaining $300 million from Brazil to Holland.

He wants to appoint a renowned property professional to develop the Portugal site and eventually spin it off. With the remaining assets he plans to acquire an established cash generative business.

Meanwhile, he is undertaking smaller transactions, such as last weeks 2.6 million bid for marketing services outfit Real Affinity. Pearson is starting to attract long-term investors to back him and at a 68% discount to net asset value of 205p a share, others should follow this lead.

Christopher Spink
Market cap: 114.3m
PE Forecast: n/a
Share price: 66p

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hundreds piled in before results hoping for a quick killing. it didnt happen so they sold which has spooked a few other. hence the price drop. each to their own but imo they are VERY shortsighted.

Agree. Greed & fear. Sit back and watch it happen. Great buying opportunity in the making for newcomers prepared to hold more than a week.

Some very sustained buying yesterday without any great effect. If the big T trade at the end of the day was a sell, just could be that Phillip Wood was selling some stock to invest in MOI. Just a theory but, if so, LGB should start to recover.

rumour has it that todays massive volume was one or more institution/s buying in and clearing out the big forced seller...

guess we'll see tomorrow...

also may be more institutions coming on board as Pearson is currently doing the rounds in the city...