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% !!!!!

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...

Anyone seen the RNS on the other side. Merrill Lynch bought 250,000 @ .59p own 4.6million shares = 2.65% of Co.

More news tommorrow, looks like Stuart Pearson doing the business.

Looking good for tommorrow.

..............looks like the 'business' isn't helping .........it really gives me the creeps this share........can't bear to look sometimes....

Hi BOOBOO
Looks like being BOOHOO for awhile now. Don`t understand why this cash rich company is so oversold. Has the money been carried away in suitcases to the Bahamas or something ?! Why doesn`t anyone like companies making money anymore ? Anybody would think the interim results showed a massive loss not millions of pounds gain !!!!....if I had any spare cash I`d be buying more to average down ....quite heavily I would hope...but I haven`t got any...I wonder if I contact Stuart Pearson....he`s got alot of cash on his hands !!!....looks like my time scale for profit has to be extended a tad !! Good luck all.

Some further fund buying~

RNS Number:4942S
Universities Superannuation Scheme
11 October 2005


Date of Disclosure 11/10/05

DISCLOSURE UNDER RULES 8.1(a), 8.1(b)(i) and 8.3
OF THE CITY CODE ON TAKEOVERS AND MERGERS

Date of dealing 5/10/05

Dealing in LANGBAR INTERNATIONAL LTD (name of company)

1) Class of securities (eg ordinary shares) COMMON EUR 0.001 SHARES


2) Amount bought Amount sold Price per unit

200,000 - #0.60

3) Resultant total of the same class owned or controlled
(and percentage of class) 3,420,000 (1.96%)


4) Party making disclosure UNIVERSITIES SUPERANNUATION SCHEME LIMITED

RNS Number:4944S
Universities Superannuation Scheme
11 October 2005


Date of Disclosure 11/10/2005

DISCLOSURE UNDER RULES 8.1(a), 8.1(b)(i) and 8.3
OF THE CITY CODE ON TAKEOVERS AND MERGERS

Date of dealing 6/10/2005

Dealing in LANGBAR INTERNATIONAL LTD (name of company)

1) Class of securities (eg ordinary shares) COMMON EUR 0.001 SHARES


2) Amount bought Amount sold Price per unit

400,000 - #0.59

3) Resultant total of the same class owned or controlled
(and percentage of class) 3,820,000 (2.19%)


4) Party making disclosure UNIVERSITIES SUPERANNUATION SCHEME LTD

andyeds,

just checked the LSE website, and then realised that none of the Oct RNSs for LGB show up on MAM (for me).......

and sure enough, there is a big long being closed, and a major share-holder selling at low price a couple of percent of the company (but still remaining with about 19%)......

i assume the sp has been held back so that they can all get on board........
would tie in nicely with the insto's getting in......

Alternatively, belisce6, the sp was held back so the major share-holder could offload 2% at a nice low price - I don't think so, do you?

Since the price is being held way low on sentiment, sentiment must be taken to be the dominant factor over fundamentals that is governing the SP. The sentiment is evidently speaking its mind currently. So I guess, we all have to wait for a change in sentiment for a decisive change in the SP - who knows in which direction. I'd need it to be dma-breakingly northward before entering the debate with hard currency. The safest entry point would be as it breaks the July 100p high. You may miss out on the first 50p, but you capture the next 50p much more safely. However, I do not expect many PI's who also read BB's will be taking this advice - atque mea culpa.

sd

Hi All,

Those who remember my posts on FYB, the one's I was suspended for, and decided not to go back .... well here you have the proof that I was posting a perfectly valid statement, by suggesting that LGB would suspend the stock, pending a revaluation, this has happened today, so LOL at FYB !!!!

Statement re. Suspension

RNS Number:5412S
Langbar International Limited
12 October 2005


Langbar International Limited ("the Company")


The Company announces today that it has requested the suspension of trading in
its common shares of Euro 0.001 each in the capital of the Company with
immediate effect pending independent verification of certain of the assets of
the Company.

Excellent, independent verification and true value to come..what price will it start trading at, any guesses?

So paul , what else do you know?