The CEO's so close to cracking it.
Ince Gordon Dadds has missed a third self-set deadline to disclose its overdue results.
The listed firm announced in December that it was unable to publish its results for 2022 because its new auditors, BDO, had been stumped by the company books.
Ince said the beancounters had told the firm "the complexity of historic and legacy accounting issues" meant BDO required "more time to conclude their outstanding audit work".
As a result Ince's shares were suspended from trading on AIM from 3 January, but the firm said it expected the issue to be resolved by 31 January.
That deadline sailed by with no sign of the results, and instead Ince told the market it was having to postpone a second time as BDO "require additional time to conclude their audit procedures". Not to worry, because the "short delay relates to the review process for a number of outstanding technical items" and the firm predicted they would be published by no later than 10 February.
Sharp-eyed readers will notice that date is in the past and yet Ince's shares are still unavailable for eager traders to exchange.
Dates are not Ince's strong point, and last Friday the firm shuffled back into the public square and mumbled that BDO, "having made substantial progress", and "now being in the final stages of quality control", only "requires approximately two more weeks to complete its audit procedures". It shuffled back again to correct itself a little later after accidentally naming its broker as Zeus Capital as opposed to Arden Partners.
Having quashed investor anxiety and expertly curated buyer demand, CEO Donald Brown will finally be able to watch as the Ince Group's share price, which collapsed from a high of 88p in April 2021 to 5p immediately pre-suspension, roars to hitherto unimaginable heights. Next week. Definitely.
He will do it without the firm's head of property or its head of admiralty, however, as RollOnFriday understands both have left the firm.
ROF has also received reports that the Ince Group failed to pay partners’ tax payments which were due to HMRC on 31 January.
One insider said the alleged omission was necessary because the company would have otherwise defaulted on bank covenants, which it was decided took priority. However, a source close to the firm put the blame on the results delays, for which they said BDO was responsible.
BDO did not respond to comment, and Ince declined to comment on the record.
A spokesperson for HMRC said, "Due to taxpayer confidentiality, we cannot comment on identifiable taxpayers".
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Comments
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What a mess. But then again all of them except Keystone and Gateley seem to be in a mess. I wonder which of them is closest to going bust?
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That’s not me!!
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Is sinking. Who needs the re release of titanic with this lot running the show.
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Dan Neidle to the rescue??
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Blame the auditors? Talk about shooting the messenger.
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Who do we think is going to scoop in and get a bargain?
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Law firms need to be run by Financial Managers/Accountants who understand Accounting law and procedure.. This gives the legal profession a bad name.
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@10.08 I completely agree. Let’s bring in….. Tony Stockdale because he is an accountant and since Metamorph collapsed, he has plenty of time on his hands.
Great shout. Are you out there, Tony? What’s your number?
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You never let bean-counters run a firm. They know the cost of everything, the value of nothing and generally have the resilience of a brown paper bag.
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Biles told me “let’s face it, lawyers can’t run law firms”. Three years in, stock price down from 180p to five pence and, despite years of stewardship by bean counters, they can’t produce accounts.
Meantime, law firms run by lawyers have been making out like bandits.
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Wow lucky escape, went for an interview there, thought it strange how they boasted about bean counters running the firm.
Sadly I didn't get the role.
Yippeeeeee
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Rule remains *never* invest in a listed law firm (apart from Keystone, that one seems to be OK and, judging by the fact that it won the firm of the year on RoF in 2021, it probably has a bright future).
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@Bean counters? 17 February 23 13:59
>You never let bean-counters run a firm.
That happened in a very much former company I once worked for. They brought in a bean counter to turn us around. The company duly folded. There was one bit of happy ending, though: I was prosecutor's witness when the CEO was put on trial for fraud.
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Wow dodgedabullet you must really need to work on your interview skills if even dodgy Ince rejected you.
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I’ve just had a look at the Ince share price and read around the accounts failings. This looks to be a total mess. I shall be interested to see whether it can trade out of this. Law firms are high risk investments. People businesses only have value for as long as they can hold on to their people.
It doesn’t appear that Ince can. It certainly won’t be able to attract new, good quality people and clients as a result of the bad news stories.
Trading out may prove to be impossible.
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It’s fvcked - even the shiny eyed couple of defenders of Ince who used to post brittle bombast on Ince news stories/discussion threads have disappeared: it’s over.
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At least Ince partners can sing! Julian Clark’s album will save the firm.