Defeat of a Share Shark

 7 March 2004, Mail on Sunday

EVERY week, Tony Hetherington replies to readers' letters, adding comments, advice and the results of his enquiries.

If you think you are a victim of financial mismanagement, or want advice before investing, write to Tony Hetherington, Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS.

Sorry, but he cannot give personal replies.

Please send only copies of documents - if these are relevant to your enquiry.

We regret that they cannot be returned.

K.B. writes: I was phoned last May by Mike Rush from investment firm Hoffman Philips. He told me Equity Portfolio was about to float in June and he could offer shares at a discount.

A week later, Michelle Blackwood phoned and I invested £2,093. In June the flotation* was said by Hoffman Philips to be postponed to July.

After it was delayed again, I found that the Financial Services Authority* had warned against Hoffman Philips. 

I had assumed that the company was based in London because it had a London address and an “0871” telephone number, but Ms Blackwood surprised me by saying she was in Barcelona. In August I asked for my money back, but received no reply.

FINANCIAL Mail warned against Hoffman Philips as long ago as October 2002. Since then, the FSA has issued warnings and Hoffman Philips is also blacklisted by watchdogs in Spain, Slovenia and Austria. One of the rip-off merchants behind this unauthorised investment firm is Sohail Iqbal. He was also in the unlicensed broking business KP Allen.

Another Hoffman Philips boss is Dhilip Nandana Mallawa Arachi. He used to be manager at an investment firm called Union Partners, now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.

Despite all this and its pretend British address and phone number, Hoffman Philips has the support of London lawyers Atlantic Law, headed by colourful businessman Andrew Greystoke.

His past is littered with failed firms and his own list of controversial deals, collapsed companies and court battles stretches back decades.

According to Atlantic Law, mailshots from Hoffman Philips are perfectly legitimate and there is no reason to believe the Barcelona sharks will be anything other than fair and honest in dealings with their victims - sorry - clients.

As proof, Andrew Greystoke gleefully told me your £2,093 had been refunded in full, with a complete apology.

This is a half truth. You told me: 'I had plagued Hoffman Philips for six months with phone calls and threats of legal action.' You were repaid ten days after Financial Mail intervened.

I don't expect Hoffman Philips to change its ways. What do you expect from a shark but a bite? And I don't expect Atlantic Law to change either. It lends its name to Hoffman Philips but can stand clear when the wheels drop off.

What would be nice would be action from the FSA. It condemns Hoffman Philips. But who authorises Atlantic Law for investment advice? Yes, the FSA.

Update 1: End of the £100m buy-to-let tricksters

THE Department of Trade and Industry has won a High Court order to wind up Practical Property Portfolio Ltd, a buy-to-let scam firm that conned investors into paying £100 million for what turned out to be derelict, boarded-up houses.

A year ago, I persuaded the firm to pay a reader six months' rent it had promised when he bought one of its properties. 

Soon after, I was on the phone to its Gateshead offices, trying to discuss more complaints with boss Eric Armstrong, when I heard police and DTI investigators burst in.

Now the DTI says that Armstrong and another

 

director, John Potts, misrepresented the value of properties, failed to keep proper financial records and broke contracts with investors. Orders banning them from boardrooms must now be on the cards.

Update 2: The “International Society of Poets”

SOME scammers clearly do not read Financial Mail. More than a year ago I exposed the so-called International Society of Poets.

I submitted a few lines of doggerel based on the disclaimer in investment ads: 'The past is not necessarily a guide to future performance..' and so on.

This was great stuff, the USA-based society told me, and it wanted to publish my work in a book to be called Letters From The Soul. A snip at just £38, and how many copies would I like?

Financial Mail issued a warning to budding poets that this bunch were after signed cheques, not sonnets.

But a few days ago, up popped an email on my computer: the society had hired someone to read my poem at a gathering at Disney World in Florida, and I have been awarded a silver trophy and a bronze medal on a satin ribbon.

All I have to do is send hundreds of dollars to pay for them. Now let me think, what rhymes with 'get lost'?

Update 3: Halifax boss appalled by muddle over loan balance.

P.I.R. writes: I paid £2,123 to the Halifax last July after being told it would clear my mortgage, leaving £125 outstanding so the deeds would be held in the Halifax's Deedstore service. I

n September, I was notified by Halifax that I owed £46 and my mortgage still had two years to run. My wife complained.

In October, Halifax said my mortgage had £132 outstanding and offered details of Deedstore. I phoned and complained. One recent letter says that after paying '£21,2388', my mortgage has £125 outstanding. Another says I owe £136. The only 'little extra' Halifax has given us is extra inconvenience.

RED faces at Halifax. But the nice thing about staff there is that they put their hands up when things go wrong and they do put mistakes right.

Senior Halifax man Steve Saunders is 'appalled with the unacceptable level of service'. The idea of leaving £125 owing on your mortgage is for Halifax to pop your title deeds into its Deedstore for safe-keeping.

By the time you read this, you will have received a written apology. Appropriately, Halifax is sending you £125 to make up for the hassle.

Update 4: Prize creeps are cashing in

P.S. writes: My partner was diagnosed with cancer last year and money has been tight. So when a letter arrived from catalogue company TV Direct saying I had won £10,000, we were over the moon. It said the money would arrive faster if I ordered goods, so I did. The goods arrived, but no cheque.

THE TV Direct people are heartless creeps.

When you reminded them about the £10,000, they said they wanted to film a presentation ceremony and asked you to place another order. You did, but there was still no £10,000.

Then another letter arrived, from mail order health firm Biotonic, saying you had won £5,900. You couldn't believe your luck. You even gave them an order, too. And again, the goods arrived but no cheque.

Now both outfits are telling you to buy more goods and your prizes will arrive. Forget it. The firms are linked and the Office of Fair Trading is hard on their heels. Expect action very soon.

What the Science Says about Meeting Agendas May Surprise You. Plus an Alternative Approach That Could be a game Changer

 

It is hard to find a business book on meetings that does not start with the importance of a meeting agenda. However, research on agendas is far from enthusiastic. In fact, agendas in and of themselves do little to fundamentally improve meetings. Given estimates that 50% of agendas are merely recycled meeting to meeting, these null findings should come as no surprise. Pete’s experience is clearly not unique. In this essay I will discuss a three step plan, leveraging meeting science, to avoid the generic-agenda-pitfall. I will conclude with a new paradigm around agenda creation that might just rock your meeting world. Here is a teaser - consider framing your agendas not as topics to be addressed, but as questions to be answered, and if you can’t generate questions, that is your sign that the meeting is not needed.

Step 1: What Should be Included in the Meeting?

While meetings can certainly have an “update” component, which is only natural, this should be a small part of the meeting. If the topic does not require interaction (e.g., discussion, ideation, solution generation), another communication medium would likely be more efficient. In fact, if only about one-way information dissemination, the leader could consider distributing a recording of themselves sharing the messages instead. This is extremely easy to create using a smartphone, tablet, or PC. The beauty of this technological alternative is that would-be attendees can then listen to the recording at their convenience just as they would a podcast, and all can be archived.

In addition to the leader generating topics, ideas for the agenda should bubble up from the attendees themselves. After all, a meeting is a shared experience and it seems only appropriate to allow all parties to have some level of input. Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel once said, “the most important criterion governing matters to be talked about is that they be issues that preoccupy and nag the subordinate.” Research strongly supports the importance of “voice” in work-related activities. That is, when employees are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas in a genuine manner and those ideas are truly heard, they tend to feel a greater sense of commitment to the team and the organization. This translates into the meeting in the form of an engaged attendee, one that is fully plugged into the meeting itself.

While asking for your team’s input, however, it is important to keep in mind that you are ultimately in charge of the meeting. What employees propose should certainly be considered and taken seriously. However, if you deem the suggestion to not be a good agenda item for the upcoming meeting you should either: 1) address the issue with the employee or subset of employees outside the meeting; or (2) move it to a future meeting. The only thing you should not do when an attendee gives you feedback on agenda items is to pretend you never received the suggestion; some form of closing the loop is needed.

After identifying the potential topics and goals of the meeting, the meeting leader needs to carefully reflect on the importance of the goals and whether each is adding true value–value beyond opportunity costs (i.e., time would be better spent on other topics or having a shorter meeting). Drop content that does not make the cut. Also, drop content if the goal is only relevant to a small subset of attendees; in this case, it is best to pursue these specific topics in a different context (i.e. a group email, short meeting “huddle,” etc.)

Step 2: Ordering the Agenda Items

The next step in agenda creation involves the critical task of ordering the topics. Research has found the items early in the agenda received a disproportionate amount of time and attention, regardless of their importance. Given this, first and foremost, I recommend ranking your prospective meeting goals based on strategic importance. It is key that you have a good sense of what you feel is essential to cover, versus what is just nice to cover. With that said, issues affecting the here and now should not be automatically privileged over issues that have a longer time horizon. It is critical that meetings are not just fully focused on solving immediate problems, but also contain some more proactive, longer-term items.

Now that you have this information at hand, you can start making ordering decisions leveraging the following rules of thumb. First, if all else is generally equal, I like the idea of prioritizing employee-generated agenda items. This sends a strong message around voice, inclusion and shared-ownership. Second, although meetings should start on time and all items on the agenda should be important, the first part of the meeting can contain some “warm-up” types of items, thus serving as buffer against potential individual lateness and, more importantly, serve to build momentum (e.g., sharing quick announcements and/or quick updates from the last meeting). However, no more than 5 or so minutes into the meeting time, the most important, meaty, and critical agenda items should be broached. This not only assures coverage of these topics, but also gets attendees hooked early and engaged. It is like a good book or movie: you have to grab the audience early or they will be reaching to their phones for some multitasking relief.

It is also key to note that no matter what your agenda is, it should typically end in a similar way: close with a few-minute-long wrap-up to cover meeting takeaways, clarifying assignments, and noting some items that will be put on the agenda for next time.

Step 3: Picking the Right Way to Do the Agenda Items

The final step in agenda creation, which is so commonly ignored, is thinking about processes to use to address the various agenda items in play. Stated differently, planning a meeting is not only knowing what you want to cover, but also how you want to go about doing it. Consider the people, the tasks, the history, the potential pitfalls etc., to pick the right tool for the job. There are so many tools to consider (e.g., get people in dyads, have people brainstorm in silence, voting apps, etc.), which is why I spend nearly a third of my book on this topic. I do want to share one particularly relevant example here – assigning agenda owners.

Although the meeting leader is ultimately in charge of the meeting experience, they have the ability to share leadership in a strategic manner. One way of doing that is having certain agenda items assigned to “owners.” These owners should facilitate the discussion around the agenda item and in many cases, also be in charge of the post-meeting actions around it. The research literature shows that when you clearly and publicly attach a name to a task, you foster accountability. This, in turn, increases follow-through on what was decided at the meeting (an important piece of ultimate meeting success). This type of practice is embraced by a number of organizations. Most notably, it has become a fairly usual meeting practice for Apple. Apple initiated the concept of a “DRI”—a directly responsible individual. A DRI is assigned to agenda items for all to see. Employees expect to see a DRI next to an agenda item, and everyone knows the DRI will be driving follow-up actions after the meeting. In addition to this utilitarian purpose, a DRI serves a number of other purposes: (1) getting more people involved in the meeting; (2) providing a nice opportunity for skill development in leading meetings; and (3) making the meeting more stimulating for other attendees as more voices are incorporated than just the leader. Note, it may be the case that the DRI is identified not prior to the discussion of the agenda, but at the meeting itself, post-discussion of that agenda item. Regardless, the key is to assign a DRI at some point.

A New Model – Framing Agendas as Questions to Be Answered

Before closing, I want to share a new approach to agendas. I personally find this approach highly compelling. All of the above content is relevant to this new model, but there is one fundamental uniqueness. Instead of designing your agenda as a set of topics to be discussed, consider framing your agenda as a series of questions to be answered. In other words, the meeting is being called given a need to answer a set of important questions. For example, instead of a topic titled discuss budgetary constraints consider a question such as “how will we reduce our budget by 50K by the end of the quarter”? By framing the discussion as questions, rather than topics, it is my contention that the leader will think and act differently. First, I believe it is easier to identify who truly needs to be at the meeting – those who attend should be central players in the questions to be answered. Also, you are better able to determine when to end the meeting—the meeting should end once the questions have been answered. And, you know if the meeting was successful if the questions have been answered in a compelling way. Finally, most importantly, if you can’t identify questions to be answered when planning the meeting, that tells you that a meeting is likely not needed. Consider canceling the meeting if you don’t have compelling questions and give all your would-be attendees the greatest gift in the world – recovered time.

Let me conclude with what happened with Pete after his boss put many of the ideas above into action. First, he found that his phone just did not “ding” as much. That is, meetings did not just occur out of a weekly habit, in fact they were cut in half. He still did receive information in a timely way. His boss sent out a recording of key news that he was able to listen to at convenient times (not when trying to address a customer problem). Over time, the meeting reminder “ding” was not associated with the same feelings of dread: the department meeting addressed key challenges and answered pressing questions. And, given that his boss occasionally brought snacks into the meeting, the “ding” was even accompanied by a bit of salivation.

Published on April 30, 2019 - Steven Rogelberg.  Steven G. Rogelberg PhD., is the Chancellor’s Professor; Organizational Science; at the University of North Carolina Charlotte for distinguished national, international, and interdisciplinary contributions and the author of The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance (Oxford University Press, 2019). He writes and speaks about leadership, teams, meetings, and engagement.  Follow him on linkedin at linkedin.com/in/rogelberg.

Visiting Eretz Yisroel

Regarding the trip to Jerusalem, see below some suggestions, but there's of course so much more to visit and to see that you'll be better off asking other people as well:

Call Rabbi Mose Ariel Mozes on 00972544288744, who runs the Kollel HaAr"y at the Kosel, where there's a very nice kiddush every Shabbos morning.

Call Ofer on 0097235348487 or the Dean Rabbi Rabbi Yitzchak Goldstein on 00 972 2-671-6841 / 00 972 52-352-2888 6271230@gmail.com, of the Diaspora Yeshiva near King Davi'd tomb, where there's the first Holocaust memorial (before Yad VaShem) with many artefacts brought over by survivors from Eastern Europe.

Call Rabbi Yechezkel Friedman on belz013@gmail.com / 00972 533 196 018, the tour guide for the ten-floor Mercoz - Belz Shul in Romema - the Belz World Center in Kiryat Belz, who conduct tours in English for tourists.

Call Rosalind Elbaum on elbaum@jct.ac.il to take your group around the JCT or Machon Lev - aka Jerusalem College of Technology.

Call Tzvi Rosenbaum on 00972527610101, zr@charedicts.org.il to take your group around the Merkaz Charedi Institute of Technology.

Ask Rabbi Yisroel Abramov, Program Director, Olami Scholars, Phone: 052-592-1919, Email: yabramov@olami.org, www.olamischolars.org to speak to the group, as he's a powerhouse of Kiruv in the UK and USA.

Visit Temech Hub of Technology info@temech.org, 009722-538-8665, Jaffa Street 216, Jerusalem jerusalemhub.org.il

Call Rabbi Shimon Shnitzer 050-583-8440, zimra10@gmail.com of אגודת זמרה וחסד to allow your charges to participate in his work on behalf of the victims of terror and violence.

Call Rabbi Jonathan Sigal, Executive Director of European affairs/ICPHH (The International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim), sigaljj@hotmail.com, +31686225838, +31207720999, to arrange a tour of the Mount of Olives.

If you are attracted to visit the Tanach Zoo via iTravelJerusalem: Jerusalem's Official Travel, Tour and Attractions Website, only go there if you've verified that the tropical species (giraffe, lion etc.) have come out of their hibernation...

Send eMail to the newsletter Potchim Shavua potchims@gmail and ask them to reply with their weekly attachment in PDF format.

North Central Tel Aviv Synagogue: https://www.by126.org/eng/home

Shuls and Synagogues in Tel Aviv Olim Friendly Synagogues in Tel Aviv | Secret Tel Aviv - make sure to visit Kehal Chassidim on Mesilat Yeshorim (or nearby) where the Shechunat Shapira once stood.

Hi Tech Incubator https://www.kamatech.org.il

Kotel: contact_english@thekotel.org/ 

Re: Contacting Am Yisroel about Eretz Yisroel

Here are some more contacts:

United Synagogue's Israel representative, Rabbi Gideon Sylvester in Jerusalem - United Synagogue Israel Rabbi: Gideon Sylvester | Facebook, (4) Gideon D Sylvester (@GideonDSylveste) / Twitter.

OU Israel - OU Israel Center Programs. Variety of activities all Jews.

Mizrachi info@mizrachi.org

Schedule a visit to the Knesset, please send an email to tours@knesset.gov.il or call 02-6753337.

The following individuals might also be of help:

Rabbi Emanuel Ravad ravad@mikvatikva.org 

I'm sure that hello@aish.com,  חב"ד | English | Chabad Youth Organization in Israel and similar organisations will be a source of help too.

CoJO will happily provide you with many more contact details of the Who'is'Who in the Jewish world.

I wish you and Am Yisroel Hatzloho Rabboh!

Menasche Scharf

Zooming Chassidim החסידים הנודדים

00447974160252