Thoroughbred float quickly looks like an old nag

In an unusual moment of SlackBelly prescience, my notional short of Betfair - the recently floated betting exchange - is looking increasingly shrewd.

Its first set of interim numbers today - already showing sluggish growth - have caused the shares to slump (again), leaving them 22% below the 1300p IPO price and 26% off the level that even some duffer like me could tell was too rich.

I had attempted to short the shares on Betfair's own financial exchange, LMAX, only to be thwarted because the new website is yet to actually take bets on individual companies.

No wonder. LMAX is part-owned by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank which apart from stuffing investors with the Betfair float is also a hero of recent IPO campaigns such as Ocado (recovering to 8% below) and Promethean World (70% lower).

Still, you'd be a fool and a communist to suggest that they didn't deserve their fees.

Shooting the messenger

Brunswick, the self-regarding City PR firm, presided over the recent flotation of Ocado when it assisted the internet grocer's persistent claims that it might be worth as much as 275p a share (it ended up slashing the price to 180p). It then merrily spun away as the shares have slumped below 140p. Now a fellow Slacker emails with a rumour doing the rounds that Brunswick might be about to lose the account. So harsh.

Virgin (in)Active

Much talk about a potential sale of Virgin Active to private equity. But is it really likely?

Potential bidders seem baffled by the stories and suggest that ubiquitous adviser Goldman Sachs - fresh from its Ocado triumph - is leaking the stories in a desperate effort to stuff another over-priced offer down investors' throats. Developing...

Dissing Missing Gissing

Everybody in the City knew that the Ocado emergency rights issue/float was a dog - unless, of course, they worked for the company, its spinners Brunswick or the plethora of investment banks the online grocer paid to keep quiet about the offer (all of which are sell signs on their own).

Still, with hindsight, another red flag occurs. My old friend, Jason "Missing" Gissing, the group's newly anonymous co-founder and former finance director, now has the job of Ocado's "Director of People, Culture and Communications". Would anybody invest in a company employing directors with such pretentious titles?

Return of a Gissing person

Has Ocado co-founder, Jason "Missing" Gissing, really got nothing better to do?

The Bullingdon Club boy was once the online grocer's frontman but, strangely, has had a remarkably low profile during the company's emergency rights issue/float and did not even make the team-sheet for last week's all important US investor roadshow.

I simply wondered where he'd got to, and it seems my innocent musings have touched a nerve as Missing has actually bothered to reply.

"Dear Slackbelly," he writes, during a rare piece of downtime. "Thank you for speculating on whether Gissing has gone missing. I am pleased to inform you that I am very much alive and well, and present!"

"If things get quiet over the summer, perhaps you would like to come to Hatfield, where I spend most of my time helping run Ocado and looking after the welfare of our 4000+ workforce. I suspect it might make a change from most of your company visits. I also suspect that you will find our people happy that I haven’t actually gone missing as I am spending much of my time improving the internal workings of Ocado (including staff welfare). It doesn’t make for good reading, but its [sic] just as important as meeting potential new investors in our IPO! Best regards, Jason."

Most self-effacing - and this from an entrepreneur who is desperately trying to float his (unprofitable) company in two days' time. Get on with it man!

Black not sheepish about breaking silence of the lambs

We've all kicked ourselves when unloading the weekly shop only to discover we've neglected to pop a couple of important items into the basket. But has Ocado just done the same?

The unprofitable soon-to-be-floated online retailer hired UBS, JP Morgan Cazenove, HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, Numis, Jefferies and Goldman Sachs to assist on the listing - a tactic almost certainly designed to stop any heckling about the firm's over-priced offer, as the flotation gig includes the implicit support the banks' biddable analysts.

Still, scribblers at institutions missing out on the Ocado gravy train don't seem as keen to partake in this silence of the lambs - and Shore Capital's Clive Black and Arden's Nick Bubb have even had the gall to say so. Time to pay off this insolent pair too?

Sindy Column...

This week's column...

BP's embarrassing windfalls

BP shareholders have watched the value of their investment slump by a third since the leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But some canny investors saw significant profits before disaster struck.

Who were these prophets? Step forward BP chief exec, Tony Hayward, and Andy Inglis, boss of exploration and production, who respectively trousered £1.4m and £498,000 via share sales in March, just a month before the blast that killed 11 workers and triggered environmental catastrophe. I wonder if the pair might make a magnanimous gesture and donate their profits to charities helping the local flora and fauna get their lives back?

"Ha!" said a BP spokesman, before composing himself: "Er, erm ... I'll get back to you." Like a Gulf of Mexico solution: still waiting.

A deafening silence

Ocado, the unprofitable soon-to-be-floated online retailer co-founded by ex-banker Jason Gissing, right, has hired UBS, JP Morgan Cazenove, HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, Numis, Jefferies and Goldman Sachs to assist. Might handing so many banks a slice of the pie come with a price - i.e., no heckling about the float from their analysts? "I think there are a few more analysts around than just those at these banks," blocks a mouthpiece. Possibly, but the tactic seemed to work on the laughable Prudential rights issue, which boasted a team sheet that read like the Who's Who of investment banking. Coincidentally, it attracted virtually no objective comment by their biddable analysts.

A Wanless wonder

Sir Derek Wanless defiantly refuses to allow career embarrassments keep him out of the public eye. Having spent the credit crisis as the head of Northern Rock's risk committee, he followed that triumph by accepting pointless honorary degrees from former polys before moving to the speaking circuit. His latest appearance came last week at Durham University, during a seminar on water. Has the man no shame?

Music, maestro!

For 20 years, Nigel Brown, the founder of NW Brown Group, has been supporting promising musicians by forming syndicates to buy them instruments - which they can then buy for themselves during the span of their careers.

These are decent - tax efficient - investments, as these rare instruments tend only to rise in value ("Antonio Stradivari has given me an undertaking not to make any more," says Brown). If you want to hear how they sound, pop along to Cambridge's West Road Concert Hall on 14 June, when the businessman is staging a concert featuring his prodigies. They include Natalie Clein, pictured, the cellist and former Young Musician of the Year. Nigel Kennedy was also given a boost by these syndicates, but let's not hold that totally against Brown.