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Yesterday’s trading: Geldof's TenAlps is a class act

By This Is Money
Updated: 03:39 EDT, 28 February 2008

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Is Sir Bob Geldof's Ten Alps ready to scale the heights? Well, according to one well connected media luvvie the answer is yes.

Geoff Foster, Daily Mail.

Gossip has it the government is about to renew the company's contract to provide Teachers' TV.

While TTV's output will hardly set pulses racing - I can't wait to tune in to the next edition of Revitalising Your Library - at £50m the five-year deal is a lucrative one and double the independent production company's £23m market value.

'This is like gold dust for a small independent television firm,' a source on Soho's media circuit tells me.

Word is Ten Alps fought off stiff competition from Question Time maker Mentorn to retain the rights.

Geldof is now a non-executive director of the factual programmer, and the day-to-day running of the business is left to co-founder and chief executive Alex Connock. Remember Sir Bob originally made his millions from another media firm, Big Breakfast producer Planet 24, which he sold back in 1999.

Ten Alps closed unchanged at 46¼p. The year's high was 68½p.

Geneva-based financier and Polar traveller Andrew Regan's companies came under attack from hungry bear raiders amid rumours that the pips are squeaking within his empire and a fundraising could be on the cards.

Down from a year's peak of 26¾p, shares of his main investment vehicle Corvus Capital fell a further ½p to a low of 4⅜p, while Commoditrade, in which Corvus owns 20%, dropped to 13p on lumpy selling before closing 1½p cheaper at a low of 13½p following turnover of 34.6m.

Recent sales by Corvus of stakes in Nanoscience and Zest Group increased concerns that Regan does need cash and could soon even sell out of Commoditrade. But a spokesman last night described all the rumours as 'total rubbish' and added: 'Corvus has seven years of cash on its balance sheet and is under no financial pressure whatsoever. The boys have just decided to have a go during the close season.'

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Commoditrade, the broking group Regan established in 2005, which held abortive takeover talks last year, warned in a recent statement that the trading environment remained challenging.

It reiterated that pre-tax profits for the year to end December 2007 would not be less than £16m, up from £13.4m. The board also put the brake on its buy-back programme as it entered a close period before the results in early April.

Bears mauled bank shares first thing and the Bank of England was forced to deny scurrilous rumours that a major UK bank had knocked on its door for rescue funds and it had also injected three months funds into the market to boost liquidity.

Disappointing annual results from HBOS (48p down at 657p) had already got the day off to a bad start and that just tempted canny investors to take profits at Royal Bank of Scotland (3½p easier at 410p) ahead of today's full year figures.

Dealers were initially excited to see a lump of 50m RBS change hands at 400p and 30m LloydsTSB (6p easier at 476¼p) traded at 467p. Rumours quickly spread that the Qatar Investment Authority was the big buyer but alas, that was not the case.

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It was just some old fashioned 'dividend washing' going on, whereby a bank buys shares from an institution before the dividend is declared, parks the stock overseas where there is a favourable tax treatment once the dividend is announced. The stock is then returned to the institution and the bank trousers the money saved on the dividend.

The Footsie was dragged 98 points lower but recovered to finish only 10.9 points off at 6,076.5. Wall Street stopped the rot, rising 66 points following Federal Reserve chairman 'uncle' Ben Bernanke's congressional testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. He said the Fed would remain open to rate cuts to help the economy. The Fed has slashed rates by 2.25% since September to 3%.

Miner Vedanta Resources jumped 127p to 2198p on renewed Chinese stakebuilding speculation.

Chairman Sir John Craven's £2.17m sale of 63,808 shares at 3403.2p left Lonmin 36p lower at 3395p.

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