I see that we attended the same alma matar. (Go to Hell Carolina!)
Incidently, I am told that before LONE became stuck in the quagmire they're attempting to escape from, they were looking at forming a partnership with the endowments of several universities in order to attract additional investment capital to aid their acquisition strategy, just as Conseco did up until 1996 when Hilbert decided that Conseco had grown large enough to go it alone. UVA was organizing the outside investors of which the Duke Univ. endowment was one.
LONE is 40% owned by the Southern Group, which purchased LONE's predecessor in 1996 and gave it a capital infusion to save it from being taken over by the LA insurance commission. The S. Group maintains a web site for LONE at southerngroup.com where you can find a complete listing of LONE's press releases to date. There you can see a skeleton sketch of LONE's recent history, disappointments and triumphs. The disappointments are plain to see in the stock price movement, but what is perhaps under appreciated is that in spite of all its trouble LONE is still alive today. The Classert class action lawsuit would have killed it if Brent hadn't come up with the financing to reach an equitable settlement, which is where the reg. S issues helped. Management was caught between a rock and a hard place; damned if you do and damned if you don't. In spite of the abuse LONE suffered consequent to the reg. S issuances, the debenture holders appear to have sown the seeds of their own destruction by, according to LONE management, illegally shorting the stock immediately upon purchasing the debentures instead of waiting until they had converted their shares (thirty days I think). If they had only waited they would have had a nice return on their investment for such a short period of time. Instead they decided to pursue a course of action that left them vulnerable to the RICO class action lawsuit that LONE initiated against them ten months ago seeking damages equal to loss of market capitalization and, by virtue of it being a RICO suit, treble damages. Because of its scope (involving a number of both plaintiffs and defendents), the suit is moving along slowly. Recently though a milestone was passed when the presiding federal judge threw out all of the defendents' motions to have the case dismissed, paving the way for the trial I presume. Cheers-- |
