Indications are that Electra wants rid of their problem child Knight Square (parent of the Firstport Group)
If we look at Electra one division was responsible for their investment strategy on behalf of the parent company.
When Edward Bransom bought into the group after winning a savage battle with Electra's former board he was aghast at some of Electra's investments and promptly sacked Electra's investment division(which was subsequently re-named Epirus).
As part of their attempots to fight off Mr Bransom, Electra sold off many of their assets in order to raise cash which they could claim as "profit".
Unfortunately Knight Square was not able to be sold, so Electra were left with a rump of problem investments which Mr Bramsom is said to want shot of.
But of course who would want to buy Knight Square? They are heavily in debt, has a shocking reputation and is reliant on being enshrined into leases and so gaining management contracts or developer appointments.
Legislation making it easier for leaseholders to excercise control is coming in the next two-three years which would undermine the Firstport business model.
Given a free choice how many leaseholders would choose Firstport to manage their development?
So, having made a considerable profit (from interest charges and fees from Firstport) who could Electra sell to?
The obvious choice must be a management buyout?
Before this could happen though debt would need to be taken out of the company.
They would need to steamline their complex company structure.
They would need to offload their loss making Appello division.
If this could be achieved than a Management Buyout is possible for a token amount.
In recent weeks shares have been cancelled which taskes away the Knight Square liabilty for them. This has reduced Knight Square liabilities by aropund £10,000,000.
Knight Square are re-structuring all their divisions and bringing the number of companies down to a much lower level.
Firstport have recently appointed another company to handle the work normally carried out by Appello who would automatically be awared contracts.
About Peverel awaits developments and would like to apologise to all those who would have preferred this to remain secret.
