yeh, you are right, sorry for that. In this way, if this company holding reduced, it is not required to disclose.
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Why make a distinction between shares held by him as an individual and shares held by his investment company (Far East) which incidentally, he appears to have incorporated in the tax haven of Hong Kong (Its not a NZ company).
Edit: is Far East only his? His company I think is China Scott, which is also Hong Kong registered.
I didn't mean romantic love, I should have been more specific. Your forum-disposition tends to suggest a certain level of respect for the man. Does my perception of your forum-disposition reflect, perhaps, an idolization of sorts?
The reason I ask is that sometimes your discussion of the somewhat complicated relationships between Handley's snakes is irrationally optimistic... Do you give any weight to the counter-Handley discussion, or is it all hogwash?
All this getting too mind boggling and off the beaten track.Look at the market???
SNK and GEO are having a race to the bottom and it's a dead heat at present.You might say they
are both " Going like a bomb"
Can I say this guy learned a lot of stuff from New York last decade, planned SNK for the back door listing. stealing money from major retail investors after selling his initial shares that worth 0.5c few months later as company went to the public. Meanwhile, he uses far east trading ltd dumped the share and pays no tax, because the firm is registered in HK.
More, he is planning to get ASX listed afterwards. Similar strategy will be employed and try to complete this before market turns to bearish. May sell SNK later because of financial crisis.
Other company founders also sell shares after listed, when the price and company grows after years.
Geoffrey Handley raising $100m for mobile-only tech fund
Chris Keall | Friday December 20, 2013
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http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/f...-Handley-2.jpgGeoffrey Handley
Last month, Derek Handley was in NBR talking up his Iliad fund.
Now, with just a hint of sibling rivalry, his older brother Geoffrey has hit town, pushing the Eniac 3 fund.
Where Iliad is a single-digit millions affair, Geoffrey Handley is looking to raise $US100 million for Eniac Ventures’ third fund, Eniac 3.
This is a bigger story than brother vs brother; Handley is one of five Eniac general partners. The others are New York-based entrepreneurs Nihal Mehta, Hadley Harris, Vic Singh and the San Francisco-based engineer-turned-IP lawyer Tim Young. Eniac was formed in 2009, but its founders have been kicking around together since the dotcom boom.
Geoffrey Handley will be the public face of Eniac 3 in this part of the world.
He’ll start roadshows in February, targeting investors in New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and other Asia Pacific countries.
The minimum investment is $500,000.
“We’re not going to be playing around with $10,000 or $20,000,” he tells NBR.
He adds. “There’s some flexibility. Eniac has never looked outside the US, so we’re testing people’s appetite.”
Eniac 3 will focus exclusively on mobile-first and mobile-only startups on the US east and west coasts.
Handley says the fund will give Asia-Pacific investors the chance to own a piece of the action when companies are at a very early stage.
If all goes to plan, the mobile startups will be bought for big bucks. Handley notes the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have raised tens of billions by going public over the past couple of years. They’re spending a chunk of that money on startups.
Whereas Elias “buys you a ticket to the IPO party,” in Geoffrey Handley’s words, Eniac’s model is to put seed or angel funding into early-stage startups.
“It’s an opportunity to get in at the ground floor,” he says. (Though of course, with some startups the experience is going to be more akin to falling down the lift shaft.)
The fund takes one or two board seats at that time, which it relinquishes when the startup has its first round of venture capital funding, and VC reps come come onboard as directors. It typically keeps its shares through to an IPO. Handley says Eniac is often dealing with kids straight out of MIT or Standford; he and other partners add hands-on direction in the pre-VC phase.
Along the ways, the Eniac crew has formed close relationships with other angel investors, Handley says, including Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, Google Ventures Kevin "Digg" Rose and Ashton Kutcher (yes, that Ashton Kutcher; the Hollywood actor is a "surprisingly successful" tech entrepreneur on the side).
http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/f...ctory_2010.jpg
Derek and Geoff Handley in New York in 2010 around the time of their $NZ40 million Meredith deal.
Eniac is US-based fund. Handley says there are no issues with double-taxation or other complications for New Zealand investors. Each investor becomes a limited partner who receives a dividend each time the fund cashes out of one of its investments.
Early-stage companies are of course high risk, and angel investors look for a few big hits to outweigh the inevitable busts.
With its first to funds, Eniac invested around $US200,000 to $US300,000 into each company.
Being privately held, it doesn’t publish accounts, but Handley says its first two funds have had “triple digit” returns.
And it’s public knowledge that a couple of its early investments had stellar runs. One was Twitter. Another Eniac investment, Vungle recently raised $US6.5 million in a series A round that included Google Ventures; Handley shows NBR some not-yet-public numbers from Vungle’s Series B round that are eye-popping.
Other names in Eniac’s portfolio are familiar to those who follow hot mobile and cloud startups. They include airbnb, SoundCloud, tapCommerce and Localytics.
Beyond Google Ventures, VCs who’ve come in on Eniac 1 and Eniac 2 companies include Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Melo Ventures, Spark Capital and Softbank.
Why the focus on US mobile-only startups?
“The PC is dead,” Handley says.
As the smartphone and tablet boom continues, he sees the PC market reduced to a few terminals in the business-to-business market within a couple of years’ time.
And mobile is a space the Handleys know well.
My tabloid attempt at a sibling rivalry angle nothwithstanding, Derek and Geoffrey cofounded NZAX-listed mobile ad agency Snakk Media.
And before that, they’re best known for starting up then selling The HyperFactory (also a mobile ad agency).
The HyperFactory, originally based in Auckland, was sold to US media giant Meredith Corporation in two tranches over 2009 and 2010.
At the time, it was reported the transaction was worth a total $NZ55 million to $60 million.
This week, Geoffrey Handley tells NBR that after the good (earnouts) and the bad (the Kiwi dollar heading sharply in the wrong direction), the sale shook out to about $NZ40 million.
The HyperFactory was Meredith’s seventh mobile or web acquisition. After the deal was completed, in July 2010, Geoffrey Handley stayed on with Meridith for 12 months, seeing through the earnout period by organising the various mobile newcomers (with around 1000 staff total and billings of around $US212 million) into a single division, now known as MXM. He finished up by hiring his successor, and scoring some Meredith stock as a bonus.
He then spent eight months off travelling before founding Snakk Media in Australia and hiring its initial staff.Derek Handley subsequently set up the NZ operation, and saw through Snakk's listing on the NZX Alternative exchange earlier this year (the company [NZAX:SNK] has a market cap around $NZ31 million; it recently reported a 148% rise in half-year revenue to $3 million, and a loss of just under $1 million).
Now, he’s relocating to Shanghai – round zero in his fundraising efforts for Eniac 3, and also where his wife Anna has landed the role of managing director of PHD’s China operation.
Although he’s lived in the US for years, Asia Pacific is territory Geoffrey Handley knows well.
His family – a mix of Malay, Chinese and Arab roots - moved to NZ from Hong Kong to New Zealand when Geoffrey (now 38) was 17 and Derek 13. Their parents now live in Thailand.
He’ll be travelling the region over the next year drumming up support for Eniac 3 which, should it succeed in its fundraising, will dwarf Eniac 1 and 2.
It’s a new level of ambition, and it will find Geoffrey Handley in previous untapped territories, including Cambodia, in his search for capital.
And in the US, where Eniac 3 will invest, the mobile revolution is changing the landscape faster than anywhere else.
But some things haven’t changed. Handley says he’s still surrounded by familiar faces.
“We’re all part of what was a very small mobile community that has grown exponentially over the years - but leaders are the same.”
ckeall@nbr.co.nz
My head is spinning and all snaaked out reading this thread now,I feel the only cure may be to hit the sell button then I won't be drawn to read it so much but yeah/nah will wait till march and see what transpires and take a couple of panadols ever now and then to stop the spinning:cool: