People: Sweet and sour for Negal

Keith Negal, the cheerfully combative company doctor and ex-bomb disposal expert who has been sorting out the mess at delisted China play London Asia Capital, has been relishing his victory over hedge fund QVT’s attempt to redirect the company and liquidate its portfolio. No stranger to controversy on the smaller company scene, he found a special shareholders’ meeting called by 12 per cent shareholder QVT ‘pretty tame’.

Crucially, recalls Negal, ‘we found a home’ for the shares of one of the key players. And Brett Miller of Astaire Securities, one of QVT’s nominees to replace most of the existing board, did not appear in person.

Also absent was Simon Littlewood, London Asia’s former boss, under whose stewardship the company assembled its tangled web of holdings. But Littlewood has not taken the criticisms piled on him by the new regime lying down and he penned a vigorous rebuttal to shareholders, coupled with stinging criticisms of the present regime – challenged, needless to say, by Negal.

Littlewood and his former London Asia colleague Victor Ng are now leading lights at China and internationally focused Golden Bridge Merchant Bank. But, though Littlewood missed the London Asia meeting, he may have inadvertently witnessed an even greater drama.

He was listed as speaking on investing in China at an international private equity conference in Dubai on 24 November.

Two days later the Gulf state’s flagship government holding company, Dubai World, stunned international markets by requesting a debt standstill.