Alex Chesterman, the founder of Cazoo, will have his shareholding in the company almost wiped out as bondholders take control of the loss-making online car seller.
Cazoo bondholders have agreed to swap the debt they own for shares in the company, swamping existing shareholders who will own just 8pc of the online used car dealer after the transaction.
The dilution will shrink Mr Chesterman’s existing holding from 24pc to less than 2pc.
You go bust, you lose the company. Shrug.
“Stockholders have already suffered a slide of more than 99pc in the value of Cazoo since it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021.”
Rather than running off to NYSE why has nobody tried to resurrect the old stock exchanges in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester … ? (I’m assuming there was once one in Manchester.)
Bags of “Levelling up” tosh could be spoken about it. Less expensive than HS2.
How odd that Ms Sturgeon didn’t see the opportunity for a lucrative bit of corruption.
I’ve seen a suggestion to do exactly that. Sorta a local and less than AIM style thing. Might even have written it actually…
Over the years, I’ve tried to find some hard information on those things – what was listed, firms acting as brokers, liquidity, dealing costs, that sort of thing. Got nowhere, basically.
I assume that they got swamped by a network effect from the LSE, or maybe not enough local wealth to drive local liquidity, so they just died. Or maybe no local debt market. Or whatever.
Either way, trying to set equivalents up again is probably doomed to failure; unless the loans arising from the furlough scheme were bundled up, sliced and diced into bonds, converts and equity (somehow) and flogged off to the VCTs or equivalents (somehow).
Not sure how well that might have worked out, but does still strike me as a missed opportunity.
I know fuck all about cars and care less, but my missus wanted a new (two year old) Volvo so I bought her one from Cazoo.
Car was a bit uncomfortable for her to drive leg-space wise, so I sent it back, but their customer service was actually the killer – we’d probably have hung on to it if they had responded adequately to various minor issues on their much vaunted WhatsApp chat system.
The whole point of WhatsApp is it enables instant comms – OK, I don’t expect instant but I do expect same day.
By the time I’d got a response on the issues they could have sorted (bollocks like where’s the second key you said we’d get) I’d bought another car and all that remained was for them to collect their Volvo and refund me.
Absolutely barmy way to do business. I wonder how many people they’ve irritated enough to get told to fuck off and take their car back.
I said to my missus at the time they were worth shorting, but then I went to the pub.
The man trades in 24% of nothing for 2% of maybe something.Good deal.
Oh, and regional stock exchanges? Forget them. There’s this thing called the internet. Shares get listed based on a combination of buyside institutions, analytical coverage and, for a select few, time zone. The buildup of the former two can’t happen in Liverpool, Edinburgh, wherever.