todays humor: "I NEVER SCREWED ANY BODY" so states Lew Schiller The FINX GROUP MESSAGE BOARD CEO. "Schiller is quite a guy -- he's a survivor. He's dedicated to make the company work," says Brennan, a Schiller friend for 20 years.
THE FINX GROUP (BB: FXGP)
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By: DISCLOSURE $$$$
04 Oct 2002, 02:08 PM EDT Msg. 9598 of 9605
(This msg. is a reply to 9593 by lews-stool.)
I NEVER SCREWED ANY BODY INCLUDING MARK. IF YOU BEIEVE I HAVE THEN LIST WHAT THE H--L YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. IF YOU LIST THE OLD ARTICLES, THEN I WILL UPDATE THAT SITUATION AND IN MY FUTURE BOOK I WILL NAME NAMES.
I NEVER MET MARK ALTHOUGH I KNOW WHO HE IS. I AM NOT SURE I EVER SPOKE TO HIM AND IF I DID, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE TOPIC OF DSCUSSION COULD POSIBBLY HAVE BEEN. MARK IS KNOWN TO SOME BODY I KNOW AND WHAT MARKS PROBLEM COULD BE WITH ME I DO NOT HAVE THE VAGUEST IDEA.
AS FAR AS YOUR INNUENDOES YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH THEM! IF YOU DON'T, I WILL TELL YOU, SHOVE IT.
LEW
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'I NEVER SCREWED ANYBODY'
Copyright 1995 McGraw-Hill, Inc. Business Week View Related Topics March 27, 1995SECTION: FINANCE; PENNY STOCKS; Number 3417; Pg. 170LENGTH: 1284 wordsHEADLINE: 'I NEVER SCREWED ANYBODY'BYLINE: By Gary Weiss in New YorkHIGHLIGHT:Shareholders of Lew Schiller's Consolidated Tech might disagreeBODY:Lewis A. Schiller, chief executive officer of Consolidated Technology Group Ltd., takes a drag on a thin cigar and leans back in his chair. He is abearlike, affable man, 63 years old. He is in the conference room atBusiness Week, March 27, 1995 Consolidated's corporate headquarters, on the ninth floor of an old brick officebuilding in lower Manhattan. The atmosphere is mellow. Schiller is recountingone of Consolidated's latest exploits: the acquisition of a string of diagnosticfacilities in Florida. Consolidated has been on a takeover binge in recentmonths, buying an array of impressive-sounding high-tech companies. Schiller is enthused, excited.But suddenly, Schiller becomes less affable. A sensitive subject has beenbrought up: the shareholders. There are 20,000 of them, and most lost at least97 cents out of every dollar they put into Consolidated stock in the 1970s and1980s -- back in the days when Consolidated was called Sequential Information Systems Inc. Sequential was probably the most widely peddled stock to be churnedfrom the penny-stock mills of that era. Schiller, however, is tired of hearingabout the penny-stock era. "I'm an honest man," he says. "I never screwedanybody."The future is bright for Consolidated, he insists. And there's no questionthat Consolidated is doing quite nicely, at least compared with the bad olddays. The company is no longer starved for cash. It is expected to report pretaxearnings of $ 3 million, or 40 cents a share, on sales of $ 100 million for1994. Its shares, not traded for years, were listed under the new name on theNASDAQ stock market in September, 1993. But for the sad army of shareholders,Business Week, March 27, 1995 any rejoicing is premature. At Consolidated, the old penny-stock days are alive,if not well. CONVOLUTED TALE. To begin with, the acquisition binge was largelyfinanced the old-fashioned way -- by issuing stock, this time to foreigninvestors. And Consolidated has also been pushed on U.S. investors by the newgeneration of penny-stock peddlers -- Hibbard Brown & Co., the penny-stock firm that went out of business last August. As a key Consolidated market-maker,Hibbard Brown's demise last August was one of the reasons for the collapse ofConsolidated stock, from $ 6 to $ 1 a share, over the past year (chart). Bycontrast, the hapless stock buyers in the Eighties paid the post-splitequivalent of $ 40 a share or more. But that's not to say that nobody has beenable to turn a profit on Consolidated shares. One man has done that: Robert E.Brennan, the legendary penny-stock merchant.Indeed, the recent twists in the Sequential-Consolidated story are thelatest chapter in a fascinating -- if convoluted -- tale. Sequential began life in the early 1960s as an electronics firm, but its primary claim to fameinvolves another invention: the telephone. Sequential shares were aggressivelypushed by cold-calling salesmen at Brennan's First Jersey Securities and thenow-defunct Rooney Pace Inc. Rooney Pace was later found guilty of manipulating Sequential shares and misleading customers. HIGH-TECH ACQUISITIONS. When thepenny-stock schemes collapsed, so did Sequential stock. By the late 1980s, theshares could not even fetch a penny. The late Eighties and early Nineties wereBusiness Week, March 27, 1995 a dizzying nightmare of a nearly insolvent company, lawsuits, and blunders --above all the ill-fated sale of its operating company, Sequential ElectronicsSystems, to a Long Island firm called General Technologies Group Ltd. ADickensian succession of lawsuits followed. When the smoke cleared, the SEC had acted decisively -- against the people Schiller had sued.Schiller insists that he didn't blow the whistle on his former cohorts. But he cooperated, and actively, he says. In the end, General Technologies GroupLtd. Chairman Eli Reiter pleaded guilty to fraud charges, as did an auditor atthe company's accounting firm, Frederick Todman & Co. Schiller says he iscooperating with the SEC in civil proceedings against another former Todmanexecutive.All the litigating and cooperating haven't deterred Schiller from expanding Consolidated. The company has purchased magnetic resonance imaging centers and asmattering of other development-stage companies -- an employee outsourcingcompany here, a telecommunications outfit there. The aggressive acquisitioncampaign was noted favorably by Emerging & Special Situations, a Standard &Poor's publication, in its Dec. 19 issue. (S&P is owned by McGraw-Hill Inc.,publisher of BUSINESS WEEK.) The editor, Robert S. Natale, says he was aware of Consolidated's penny-stock pedigree when he listed the firm -- which, he notes, was not a formal recommendation.Business Week, March 27, 1995 Another penny-stock watcher has also had his eye on Consolidated -- BobBrennan. According to SEC records, last May 13, Brennan's company, InternationalThoroughbred Breeders, bought 750,000 Consolidated shares at $ 6.00 a share --62 cents cheaper than the closing price on that day. ITB then sold 131,000shares on May 18 at $ 6.46, 170,000 shares on May 19 at $ 6.46, and 100,000shares the following day at $ 6.47. Brennan is hazy about how much more he wasable to unload before the price collapsed. Overall, he says, he "probablysustained a modest loss." Brennan has an intriguing explanation for the swiftdumping of the stock. In an interview, he maintained that the purchase, 6.48% ofConsolidated's shares outstanding, violated ITB's policy of not buying more than5% of a company's shares. The error, he says, was discovered "by the guy whoprocesses our trades." ITB then sold the shares -- far more than was needed toput ITB below 5%. Why so much? He doesn't recall.An SEC filing says the shares were purchased in the over-the-counter market.Yet the huge trade was not made public at the time. NASDAQ records show only15,000 shares traded on May 13. Was Brennan's huge purchase reported to NASDAQ? Brennan isn't sure -- and neither is NASDAQ. James Spellman, a NASDAQ spokesman,says the trade may have been reported out of sequence, and such trades are notalways publicly disclosed.Business Week, March 27, 1995 Brennan narrowly escaped a calamity. In the summer of '94, Consolidatedshares began their sickening decline from $ 6 to about $ 1.19. The pre-splitequivalent: 2 cents. Schiller has no explanation for the decline. But the lossof Hibbard Brown clearly hurt Consolidated, because Hibbard was aggressivelypushing Consolidated shares. How aggressively? Well, in April, four monthsbefore Hibbard bit the dust, the state of Wisconsin suspended Hibbard Brown'sbroker-dealer license, alleging that the firm used misleading, hard-sell tacticsin selling Consolidated shares and two other stocks to Wisconsin residents.State officials said Hibbard Brown was running an old-fashioned boiler-roomoperation -- just the way Sequential had been sold in the Eighties. OVERSEASCASH. Schiller denies knowledge of such chicanery. In any event, in his ownstock sales he is steering clear of U.S. regulators. The company's biggestinjection of cash in recent years came from overseas, mainly Canadian investors,who bought $ 14 million in Consolidated shares sometime over the past year. As aRegulation S offering, its terms did not have to be disclosed in this countryand are of no concern to U.S. regulators.So Consolidated's army of shareholders has been reinforced. Will the newrecruits fare better than the old? "Schiller is quite a guy -- he's a survivor. He's dedicated to make the company work," says Brennan, a Schiller friend for 20years. Schiller, like Brennan, is a master survivor -- and so is Consolidated.But will the shareholders ever be made whole? An old expression may put itBusiness Week, March 27, 1995 |
