… and we’re not talking the News of the World’s fancy dress enthusiast Mazher Mahmood.
Yesterday afternoon news organisations the world over received a fax (yes, a fax, remember those?) from an organisation called Arabian Peninsula Group announcing a $49.50 bid for US car stereo-maker and Essex boy-racer staple Harman International.
Now, an S&P 500 company with a $1.7bn market cap being subject to a near-100 per cent premium hostile offer is a big story, certainly big enough for Bloomberg to flash the headline through its feed of external news stories. But the news agency appears to have pulled the story yesterday after sensing that something was not quite right, sending reporters off to check the facts…
Harman said on Monday it had received no offer and has never heard of APG.
Indeed, a quick search on the internet reveals no trace of Arabian Peninsula Group, which claims in the fax to be an august gulf investment vehicle established in 1981 to manage “private wealth of two prominent parties in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates” from its head office in Jeddah.
The commercial officer in the Saudi Embassy in London meanwhile had never heard of the group either, nor has the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce.
This isn’t the first time the Fake Sheikh has struck an unsuspecting company. Back in 2002 telecoms company Energis (later bought by Cable and Wireless) was briefly duped by a caller claiming to be a right hand man for the heir to the Saudi throne.
As the Telegraph reported at the time:
The mysterious affair started in March when the Energis investor relations department received an unusual telephone call.
Abbas Nazer said he was a representative of Crown Prince Abdullah, who held 2.45pc of the company’s stock worth £131m at yesterday’s prices. The prince was not happy, said the caller.
Energis shares had fallen sharply following an admission in March by the company that one of its shareholders, Swiss-German group Distefora, had sold shares in violation of a lock-up agreement. Shortly afterwards, on March 30, the Financial Times published a story repeating the concerns and quoted Mr Nazer saying that the “whole affair looks very murky”.
However, within a week the tone of the calls changed. Energis struck a revised agreement with Distefora at the beginning of April, which guaranteed that the Swiss-German group would stick to a new lock-up deal.
Mr Nazer then told Energis that the crown prince was very pleased. Other newspapers were contacted just before Easter and told to expect a “positive” statement from the prince shortly.
Only yesterday were the caller’s bona fides finally called into question. The Saudi embassy, in a letter to the Financial Times published yesterday, said that it “would like to categorically deny that Crown Prince Abdullah owns any shares in Energis”.
Nevertheless something seems to be up with Harman’s shares.
Now, maybe a lot of people fitted out their Vauxhall Nova’s last week. Or maybe this story has been percolating through the US market in some form or other for the last month or so. Last week its shares gained 33 per cent:
Related links:
Earth to Bloomberg: the Gold Fields bid story is a hoax – FT Alphaville