Dec 08 2008
Carphone Warehouse Co-Founder Quits!
In a shock move, David Ross, co-founder of The Carphone Warehouse, and holder of 19.4% of the shares has quit as a director of the company. He has done this because he used 136 million of his 177 million shares as security against a personal loan. He has also admitted to doing this with his Big Yellow Group and National Express shares. Mr Ross is also a director of National Express. The 177 million shares in Carphone Warehouse are worth just under £165 million. The shares in The Big Yellow Group and National Express are worth £24 million and £14 million respectively. There have been no comments from Mr Ross that he will resign as a director from either of these posts. Charles Dunstone, the chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, and friend from school of Mr Ross said that the resignation was a great personal sadness. Stock Market rules state that if shares are used in this way, then the company have to release a statement, when Mr Ross did the same thing in 2002 and 2003, Carphone Warehouse released statements. Mr Dunstone stated that he thinks that Mr Ross didn’t release a statement this time because of a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what was required of him.
In afternoon trading, shares in all three companies were down, with Big Yellow Group taking the biggest hit from the fallout, dropping 7.9%.
I personally find this amazing. I mean, if he did the right thing in 2002 and 2003, how come he messed up so badly this time? Although I guess if you have almost £200 million in shares, losing your job isn’t exactly going to be an issue when you can just sell them up and presumably swan off to a Caribbean island for the rest of your life.
