Wednesday 2 November 2016

how to do due diligence on a bond - e.g. shenton

Following on from my previous blog post on how I run due diligence, here's the first step I use in identifying who's behind an organisation.

Example, I recently found out about shenton bonds/

https://www.shentonbonds.com/


First tool I use is 'who is' which identifies who registered / is the contact for the website.


go to
https://who.is/

on shenton bonds we have


NameSteve King
OrganizationBlack Swan Data Ltd
Address100 Cannon Street
CityLondon
State / ProvinceLondon
Postal CodeEC4N 6EU
CountryGB
Phone+44.2076200260
Email

dns@askblackswan.com

going to blackswan.com gives me a creative company - this is the organisation advertising the mini bond, so I need to look at the company behind shenton. Back to the shenton website, I see...

address:

Shenton Bonds,
37 Queen Anne Street,
London W1G 9JB

The bottom of the website has the following information


The content of this financial promotion has been approved, for the purposes of section 21 of the Financial Services & Market Act 2000 (FSMA), by Resolution Compliance Limited, 37 Queen Anne Street, London W1G 9JB. Resolution Compliance Limited is registered on the Financial Conduct Authority’s Register with registered number 574048. The Shenton International Asset-Backed Mini Bond is issued by Shenton International Bonds plc.

Any investment in Shenton International Asset-Backed Mini Bonds is not covered by the Financial Services Compen­sation Scheme.

This investment is only directed at persons certified as high net worth investors, sophisticated investors or restricted investors or who are self-certified as sophisticat­ed investors in accordance with Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rules. The value of these untradeable and non-trans­ferable bonds, and any income from them, can fall as well as rise so you could get back less than you invest. Before making any investment, you should read the Invitation Doc­ument (including the section entitled ‘Risk Factors’), which can be downloaded from this website. You should consider care­fully whether an investment in Shenton International Asset-Backed Mini Bonds is suit­able in light of your personal circumstances, and if you have any concerns, seek independent advice from an appropriately qualified adviser.


So I need to look for the company 'Shenton International Bonds plc. '

Over to duedil
https://www.duedil.com/

search for shenton international gives me
https://www.duedil.com/company/09946680/shenton-international-bonds-plc
Registered Address
6th Floor 60 Gracechurch Street
London
EC3V 0HR
United Kingdom

Turnover
Unreported

Net Assets
Unreported

Return on Capital Employed (%)
Unreported

Debt to Capital (%)
Unreported

Appointments:

18 jan 2016

Ms Helen Kwai Leng Chong has been appointed as a company director.

Mr Peter William Harradine Mason has been appointed as a company director.

https://www.duedil.com/director/920406680/helen-kwai-leng-chong

https://www.duedil.com/director/903537659/peter-william-harradine-mason


Peter is also a director/secretary of courtel communications
https://www.duedil.com/company/03725998/courtel-communications-limited
(this company works with the ministry of justice to provide data to legal entities)


My view: Peter seems like a credible and experienced company director

also a quick check on the companies house website gives me...

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09946680
Confirmation that the directors are bona fide, e.g. Peter Mason
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/6nslVhEZWUTWF1Nu-_7eo2Kf1xc/appointments

That's how I take step 1 - finding out where a company is and their directors.

how I do my due dilligence on companies and investments

I often get calls from organisations offering me opportunities and some have been really great ( that's for another blog on another day ) however many are bogus or not totally truthful in what they say.

Here's how I do my 'do diligence', DD or due diligence (doo dilijens).

Firstly identify which company you are talking with.

Identify - who are they?

1. Have they sent you a web link to look at?
I'm looking to see if this is a bona fide company and not a shell company. I want to find out who the directors are and their skills.


Quantify - how successful
I want to find out how well their company is doing


Thirdly - I want to find out about the product they are offering. I know now who they are and how they've been doing.

Ratify - find approval

This can be the most difficult - because it is also associated with how acceptable this investment is to you / your peers / wife. Your attitude to risk may kick in here, too. What percentage of your premium are you willing to sacrifice in the event of this opportunity failing? How is this mitigated in the offering.

In my next blog post I'll run through the process I go through of identifying and quantifying a business and its directors.



Wednesday 12 October 2016

10 Minute Timer - Unbranded Professional Timer

Here's a timer and a video preview that is useful for professional presenters, teachers and those people fed up with inappropriate ads.

I've included a preview video and a link to the actual timer.

Video Preview



Link to Timer
click here to launch timer - F11 makes it full screen, ctrl-r or f-9 for reload

Thursday 29 September 2016

SalesForce questions [answered]

How to get your security token in SalesForce


Login to your orgnistaion and Navigate to At the top navigation bar go to <your name > My Settings > Personal  >  Reset My Security Token.
you will receive an email with your token.

Source: https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000glADAAY

Tuesday 16 August 2016

Where to find a list of uk holidays for use in php England Wales [ANSWERED]

Firstly here's the England and Wales (UK except Scotland) holidays as an array in PHP called $holidays

$holidays2015=array("2015-12-24","2015-12-25","2015-12-28");
$holidays2016=array("2016-01-01","2016-03-25","2016-03-28","2016-05-02","2016-05-30","2016-08-29","2016-12-26","2016-12-27");
$holidays2017=array("2017-01-02","2017-04-14","2017-04-17","2017-05-01","2017-05-29","2017-08-28","2017-12-25","2017-12-26");

$holidays=array_merge($holidays2015,$holidays2016,$holidays2017);


Here's a function which also has an example. Originally posted by Dave 
http://stackoverflow.com/users/4274143/dave

<?php
//The function returns the no. of business days between two dates and it skips the holidays
function getWorkingDays($startDate,$endDate,$holidays){
    // do strtotime calculations just once
    $endDate = strtotime($endDate);
    $startDate = strtotime($startDate);


    //The total number of days between the two dates. We compute the no. of seconds and divide it to 60*60*24
    //We add one to inlude both dates in the interval.
    $days = ($endDate - $startDate) / 86400 + 1;

    $no_full_weeks = floor($days / 7);
    $no_remaining_days = fmod($days, 7);

    //It will return 1 if it's Monday,.. ,7 for Sunday
    $the_first_day_of_week = date("N", $startDate);
    $the_last_day_of_week = date("N", $endDate);

    //---->The two can be equal in leap years when february has 29 days, the equal sign is added here
    //In the first case the whole interval is within a week, in the second case the interval falls in two weeks.
    if ($the_first_day_of_week <= $the_last_day_of_week) {
        if ($the_first_day_of_week <= 6 && 6 <= $the_last_day_of_week) $no_remaining_days--;
        if ($the_first_day_of_week <= 7 && 7 <= $the_last_day_of_week) $no_remaining_days--;
    }
    else {
        // (edit by Tokes to fix an edge case where the start day was a Sunday
        // and the end day was NOT a Saturday)

        // the day of the week for start is later than the day of the week for end
        if ($the_first_day_of_week == 7) {
            // if the start date is a Sunday, then we definitely subtract 1 day
            $no_remaining_days--;

            if ($the_last_day_of_week == 6) {
                // if the end date is a Saturday, then we subtract another day
                $no_remaining_days--;
            }
        }
        else {
            // the start date was a Saturday (or earlier), and the end date was (Mon..Fri)
            // so we skip an entire weekend and subtract 2 days
            $no_remaining_days -= 2;
        }
    }

    //The no. of business days is: (number of weeks between the two dates) * (5 working days) + the remainder
//---->february in none leap years gave a remainder of 0 but still calculated weekends between first and last day, this is one way to fix it
   $workingDays = $no_full_weeks * 5;
    if ($no_remaining_days > 0 )
    {
      $workingDays += $no_remaining_days;
    }

    //We subtract the holidays
    foreach($holidays as $holiday){
        $time_stamp=strtotime($holiday);
        //If the holiday doesn't fall in weekend
        if ($startDate <= $time_stamp && $time_stamp <= $endDate && date("N",$time_stamp) != 6 && date("N",$time_stamp) != 7)
            $workingDays--;
    }

    return $workingDays;
}

//Example:

$holidays2015=array("2015-12-24","2015-12-25","2015-12-28");
$holidays2016=array("2016-01-01","2016-03-25","2016-03-28","2016-05-02","2016-05-30","2016-08-29","2016-12-26","2016-12-27");
$holidays2017=array("2017-01-02","2017-04-14","2017-04-17","2017-05-01","2017-05-29","2017-08-28","2017-12-25","2017-12-26");

$holidays=array_merge($holidays2015,$holidays2016,$holidays2017);

#echo getWorkingDays("2015-09-08","2015-09-10",$holidays);
// => will return 3
?>