Letter to shareholders

Mondas PLC 25 October 2004 MONDAS PLC ('Mondas' or 'the Company') Letter to shareholders The following is the text of a letter from the chairman of Mondas, which is being sent to the shareholders of the Company today. Dear Shareholder, Mondas PLC Annual General Meeting - Letter from Tim Simon You will by now have received a letter from Tim Simon, the Company's former chairman and chief executive, dated the 21st October 2004, which contains resolutions to appoint himself and Michael Jones to the board, if Jarlath McGee and Bernard Fairman are not re-appointed at the forthcoming annual general meeting. It is a sad letter and one which has followed a sad set of circumstances. Mr Simon founded Mondas in 1991 and, until he was removed from the board in August this year, had been its chairman and chief executive for a period of thirteen years. When the roles of chairman and chief executive are combined in one individual, that individual must take total responsibility for the performance of the company which he manages and in Mondas' entire history, despite the best of intentions, the Company never achieved break even in any year, never mind a profit. Mondas was listed on the Alternative Investment Market ('AIM') in October 1996, when £1 million was raised in a placing at 75p per share. The first day closing price was 90.5p. Much was promised, but the results tell a different story. I should like to remind shareholders of the Company's performance during its eight years on AIM, under Mr Simon's leadership. Results History Year to Loss Goodwill Loss before Av. no. of Year-end Market cap. 30 Apr Turnover before tax amortisation amortisation employees share price (ords.) £m. 1997 56,609 (421,192) 81,280 (339,912) 9 1998 297,169 (482,322) 108,375 (373,947) 11 77.5 4.7 1999 955,301 (520,770) 289,687 (231,083) 12 68.5 8.6 2000 1,358,811 (857,573) 503,797 (353,776) 23 86.5 10.9 2001 2,702,141 (1,504,042) 975,172 (528,870) 33 32.5 6.5 2002 3,741,673 (2,177,858) 1,304,119 (873,739) 52 25.0 5.0 2003 3,713,353 (2,224,645) 1,391,392 (833,253) 55 23.5 4.9 2004 3,974,732 (1,779,554) 945,396 (834,158) 55 26.0 6.8 TOTALS 16,799,789 (9,967,956) 5,599,218 (4,368,738) Despite endless promises of better times ahead, year after year losses have mounted, to a total of almost £10 million in less than eight years. Goodwill amortisation cannot be excluded as it includes some very real losses, such as the cost of the Reality Communications acquisition in November 1998, which subsequently proved disastrous and cost Mondas almost £2 million. In a trading update issued on 20 April 2004, just 10 days before the year end, the Company announced that, as a result of delays in sales and contractual negotiations, results for the year to 30 April 2004 would fall significantly short of expectations. After eight years of promises, for many shareholders this was the final straw. The Company's share price responded by falling sharply. Not only was this distressing for shareholders, but it also created a potential problem with regard to the Company's £3 million of convertible unsecured loan stock. Conversion is on the basis of two ordinary shares for every £1 of loan stock, which is equivalent to a share price of 50p, but, if not converted, the loan stock is redeemable on 31 October 2005. Unless the share price recovers before then, the Company's options will be severely limited. Urgent action had to be taken, and, in my then role as senior non-executive director, and supported by Bernard Fairman, my fellow non-executive director, I began an investigation into the causes of our continuing poor performance. A company's success depends on building profitable, long-term relationships with its customers. This is especially true of Mondas' banking and securities market, where we are dealing with major international investment banks. It became clear to me that we had failed to develop successful relationships, that this had directly affected our ability to win new business, and that responsibility for this failure rested with the chairman and chief executive, Mr Simon. We announced, on 5 August 2004, that Mr Simon had been removed as chairman, chief executive and as a director of the Company, and additionally that he had been given one year's notice under his employment contract. This announcement was made after negotiations had failed to produce a compromise solution. Nevertheless, I continued to negotiate with Mr Simon and his advisors in an attempt to avoid the situation we now have. After giving the initial impression that he did want to reach a fair and reasonable settlement, Mr Simon's demands became outrageous and highly detrimental to other shareholders. Settlement therefore became impossible. Jarlath McGee was recruited by the company in December 2000 to the position of sales director of the operating subsidiary, Mondas Information Technology Limited ('MITL'), not August 2001 as Mr Simon states in his letter. That was the date of his subsequent appointment as chief operating officer of MITL, a position which reflected his wide responsibilities and his impressive leadership skills. Mr McGee has played a major part in moving our flagship Corporate Actions product ('CAPS') into the investment banking market, but he had little control over contractual matters, which Mr Simon insisted on retaining. Your directors note that Mr Simon is critical of Mr McGee. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that Mr McGee reported to Mr Simon for nearly four years. It is noteworthy that Mr Simon has only chosen to object to Mr McGee now, when he seeks to regain his old job, even though he had ample opportunity to remove him. Without Mr McGee, Mondas would not have successfully refocused the CAPS product into the investment banking market. Where would the Company be now had Mr McGee not secured GNI, CSFB and HSBC as important clients? Is Mr Simon really serious when he blames Mr McGee for the Company's poor performance? In October 2000, a successful acquisition was made. DSR Holdings Limited (now renamed the Resource division), which was acquired for a consideration of £4.53 million, has provided us with a valuable contribution over the last four years. Its education software has been highly successful and offers us considerable growth prospects. Yet credit for this acquisition should not go to Mr Simon, but to our nominated adviser, who identified the opportunity and introduced it to Mondas. Mr Simon claims to have worked for some years to resolve divisions in the board, only to have been consistently overruled. I have to tell shareholders that it was Mr Simon who created these divisions, by taking a different view to the rest of your board. The most serious of these divisions concerned the Company's workflow software toolkit, Radica, which the Company was originally set up to develop. In 2001 it became clear to your board, apart from Mr Simon, that it was not sufficiently robust to be used as a development platform in the Company's core banking and securities market. In 2002, after much heated debate at board level, the decision was taken to use industry-standard software tools, with the Radica name being retained for marketing purposes. The subsequent success of CAPS has vindicated this decision, yet even now, Mr Simon still believes the Radica platform should be used for application development in our financial markets. Mr Simon refers to Michael Jones and Professor Brian Stock-Quinn as potential non-executive directors. Your directors have no dispute with either of these gentlemen, but we are moved to wonder why, if Mr Simon now believes that they can provide such value to your company, that he did not propose them earlier, when he had every opportunity to do so. Mr Simon also claims that he has no business relationship with Michael Jones. In claiming this, Mr Simon is being disingenuous. It is certainly true to say that Mr Jones has no current business relationship with Mr Simon, but Mr Jones was chief executive of Capel-Cure Myers, when that firm was a customer of Quotient PLC, the company which Mr Simon founded and managed before establishing Mondas, and therefore had a significant business relationship with Mr Simon in the past. Mr Simon criticises Mr McGee for not purchasing any Mondas shares. Though Mr McGee has share options over 300,000 of the Company's shares, shortly after his appointment as chief executive, he told me that he intended to make a share purchase. This purchase would have taken place a few weeks ago, but could not proceed until we announced the recent Brewin Dolphin contract. I can inform shareholders that Mr McGee has today notified the Company that he has purchased 175,000 ordinary shares at a price of 20p per share. Mr Selby has also purchased a further 25,000 shares today, at 20p per share, bringing his holding to 81,553 shares. I have also purchased a further 150,000 shares at 20p per share today, bringing my holding to 1,369,757 shares, representing 5.24% of the issued share capital. A further 2,381,769 are held by friends of mine. The total number of shares held by me, by my friends, by Mr McGee, by Mr Selby and by Mr Fairman (on behalf of Foresight Technology Trust) is now 4,497,934 shares, representing 17.21% of the Company's issued share capital. Mr Simon seeks to give the impression that there is substantial shareholder support for his reinstatement, in that he and his supporters hold 23.12% of the Company's ordinary share capital. It should be noted that this includes Mr Simon's interests which, with direct, indirect and family interests, amount to 18.55%, leaving just 4.57% of other shareholder support. Your directors published their strategy review on Thursday 21 October 2004 and are committed to delivering value for Mondas shareholders. Mr Simon showed little interest in seeking out growth opportunities for the Company. I do not believe the majority of shareholders want a return to his regime of losses and stagnation. Shareholders should also know that Mr Selby was on the point of leaving the Company in July, but, when Mr Simon was removed from office, Mr Selby readily agreed to stay. If Mr McGee is now removed and Mr Simon returns, Mr Selby has informed me that he will also leave the Company, as would I, and these changes would cause enormous disruption, which I believe would damage the Company. I also strongly believe that our major customers would look seriously at their future relationship with Mondas. I referred above to the need to refinance, or to convert into ordinary shares, the Company's convertible unsecured loan stock. Bernard Fairman, the Company's other non-executive director, is fund manager of Foresight VCT, the holder of £900,000 of the loan stock. Mr Fairman has indicated that Foresight is prepared to extend the redemption date for a further five years, on terms to be agreed, but that it will not do this if Mr Simon returns to the Company. In my view, the Company is best served by allowing the new management time to deliver the value to shareholders which I believe it is capable of doing. If the new management fails in this endeavour, shareholders can always exercise their prerogative to enforce change. I believe that your board has the necessary range of skills to deliver the results which we all want; I believe that the Company's interests are best served by allowing them a period of time in which to demonstrate this; I hope that I can count on your support at the AGM or by proxy. The completion of a proxy card will not prevent you from attending the annual general meeting and voting in person, if you so wish. An overwhelming vote against Mr Simon will put an end to this nonsense and let us get on with running the business for you. Yours faithfully, Colin Peters Chairman 25 October 2004 Enquiries: Mondas PLC Tel: 020 7392 1300 Colin Peters, Chairman College Hill Tel: 020 7457 2020 Matthew Smallwood/Clare Warren This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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