The Times - UK (2022-04-09)

the times | Saturday April 9 2022 V2 49

Business

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March 2, 2020

Lorimer Headley steps

down and brings

unfair dismissal and

whistleblowing claims

against the company

December 9, 2020

Completes discounted

share placing to raise

£25 million at 90p per

share

July 19, 2021

Explores potential

dual-listing on the

Nasdaq index

November 30, 2021

Sensyne fined £406,000

and censured by the

London Stock Exchange

over the secret payment

of £1 million of bonuses

October 1, 2021

Warns of “material

uncertainty” over

future as a going

concern as losses

deepen

January 14,

2022

Warns it

could run

out of cash

in weeks

without

emergency

funding

January 26, 2022

Secures financing of

up to £11.4 million to

help it find a rescue

buyer

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8

6

4

2

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Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr 7 Apr 8

Share price over the past five days

cation of clinical AI to health data”.

Sensyne said yesterday that discussions

continued with a “small number” of

parties.

Asked why a sale had not been

struck, the source said that the NHS

data had been the “main attraction”,

and added: “Life sciences companies

want to buy clean companies that have

a clear path to making money.” With

Sensyne, a restructuring is required,

involving job losses. “It’s going to take a

long time.”

The noteholders plan to negotiate an

“appropriate” relationship with the

NHS trusts, which are said to be “open”

to the prospect. The relationship is “not

perfect but very good”.

According to the source, “it became

clear [to the trusts] the business was

very important to them and it needed a

sustainable financial model”.

The relationship is sensitive. Sen-

syne’s prospectus shows that an agree-

ment with Oxford University Hospitals

can be ended under a change of control

and refers to options relating to a new

controller operating in an “unethical

manner or in a way that could reflect

negatively on their reputation”.

The plan to take Sensyne private,

subject to a vote next month, is a rever-

sal in its original intentions. Another

source had said in November that the

growing the business on the public

markets was “a central thesis for the

company. They made a huge play on

the fact that it was public and therefore

open to scrutiny, given the model was to

acquire patient data from the NHS.”

At the time of the float, Drayson said:

“I’ll know I’ve been successful when I

can point to a building in the NHS

which exists because a trust which

worked with us benefited financially.”

That vision may yet still be achieved,

but it is now likely to take much longer

and without Drayson at the helm.

Company can return to

health without Drayson

Alistair Osborne

Comment

F

inally, some sense from

Sensyne Health. It’s got shot

of founder boss Lord

Drayson. The only

drawback? It’s about three

years too late. If his artificial

intelligence algorithms were half as

clever as he claims, wouldn’t they

have booted him out before he’d

done in the shareholders?

Drayson’s exit came with a 78 per

cent crash in the shares to 2.15p,

valuing the equity at just

£3.6 million. Not bad for an “ethical

clinical AI company” apparently

worth £225 million when Drayson

tapped investors for £60 million at

August 2018’s 175p-a-share float.

Since then, he’s raised tens of

millions more.

And for what? To take a good idea

and ruin it. Investors face an Aim

delisting, with their equity around

95 per cent transferred to the four

noteholders that have ousted him:

Gatemore, Lansdowne Partners,

Sand Grove and house broker Peel

Hunt. Drayson’s head was their price

for injecting up to £15 million more

rescue capital.

Yes, the man who left spouting

about the company’s “mission and

values” has also wiped out the

22.8 per cent stake that was held by

him and his missus. But whose fault

is that?

The sad thing is that if his mission

hadn’t included greed and chronic

mismanagement, Sensyne could

have been a success. Drayson had

spotted a potential win-win.

Sensynes’s AI algorithms would

crunch the NHS’s unrivalled store of

patient records, with the

anonymised data used by pharma

companies to find new drugs. In

return, NHS trusts got a new source

of funding, plus Sensyne equity: a

now near-worthless 16 per cent

stake. The former Labour science

minister struck deals over

12.9 million NHS patient records.

But, instead of focusing on them, he

blew cash on trite health apps barely

better than a Fitbit. Only about a

quarter of the 165 staff — many

facing the chop under the refocusing

plans of new boss Alex Snow —

were working on the main event.

Meantime, Drayson lurched from

one governance farrago to the next.

He was already rich from his former

company Powderject. But that didn’t

stop him squirrelling away a

£850,000 float bonus, plus £200,000

for ex-finance chief Lorimer

Headley, against the advice of Peel

Hunt: an affair that left Sensyne

with a stock exchange “censure”

and £406,000 fine. Or ending up in

an employment tribunal after

sacking Headley that handed him

£380,000 compo, while incurring

£1 million costs. Or being on

chairman No 4 in Sensyne’s short

public life. Throughout, Drayson hid

from the press: a tell-tale trait of iffy

chief executives.

To boot, the cash burn has been

extraordinary, typified by the latest

update: a warning that Drayson’s

blown so much of January’s

emergency £6.35 million funding

that, without the latest rescue, “the

company is unlikely to be able to

continue to trade beyond this

month”. It’s not much of a challenge

for Sensyne to be healthier without

Drayson.

A row has broken out between the
former owner of TM Lewin and its
lender, which has struck a deal to buy
the shirtmaker out of administration.
Last month TM Lewin went bust for
the second time in two years after run-
ning out of cash. It had been bought in
May 2020 by Torque Brands, an invest-
ment vehicle led by James Cox, 34, the
founder of Simba Sleep. He put the
business through a pre-pack insol-
vency to shut all 66 shops in a move that
resulted in 600 redundancies and left
unsecured creditors owed £30 million.
Administrators at KPMG fielded
interest from high street rivals includ-
ing Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group and
Charles Tyrwhitt, but it is understood
that none could match the price offered
by Petra Group, which had provided a

Ashley Armstrong Retail Editor

Under-25s and millionaires are nursing

the biggest percentage stock market

losses for the first quarter of the year,

according to a snapshot of investor

behaviour in Britain by a popular stock-

buying platform.

In a difficult quarter during which

many stock prices fell, Generation Z

investors suffered the biggest losses,

with the total return from their median

portfolio dropping by 5.5 per cent, ac-

cording to the latest Interactive Inves-

tor private investor performance index.

Wealthier investors with a portfolio of

more than £1 million, who in the past

have scored the biggest returns, also had

a difficult quarter, recording a median

total return of -4.2 per cent.

The average total return for retail

investors using the Interactive platform

was -3.6 per cent, according to the

quarterly study, which tracks the

investment picks of more than 100,000

Generation Z investors biggest losers

UK investors and studies them by age

group, gender, region and wealth levels.

Global share markets slumped for

most of the quarter before staging a

partial comeback in the last fortnight of

March. Sentiment was soured by rising

interest rate expectations and the

Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Most markets ended the quarter

down. Including dividends, the total

return from the S&P 500 in New York

was -1.9 per cent. The FTSE 100 bucked

the trend with a total return of 2.9 per

cent, thanks to its strong weighting of oil

and mining stocks.

While performance over a single

quarter is not particularly meaningful,

the losses by the 18-to-25 age group are

a turnaround from last year, when they

were producing the strongest returns.

In the 27 months since the study began,

they have enjoyed the best returns — of

16.1 per cent — of any age group.

“Young investors nursed the heaviest

losses in the firtst quarter, but they are

sitting pretty longer-term,” Interactive

Investor said.

The least bad returns in the latest

quarter were made by the 65-plus age

bracket, who lost only 3.2 per cent,

though they still lag all other age groups

over 27 months, making only 9.5 per

cent.

The youngest age bracket in the

study are heavily exposed to invest-

ment trusts, which tend to outperform

in rising markets and to underperform

in falling markets.

Women investors equalled men in the

quarter, but over 27 months are slightly

ahead, chalking up a 10.8 per cent total

return against men’s 10.5 per cent.

By wealth levels, the richest have

done markedly better over 27 months.

Customers with portfolios of more than

£1 million made median returns of

17 per cent; those with £100,000 to

£1 million notched up 13.2 per cent; and

those with £50,000 to £100,000 pro-

duced 10.2 per cent.

Patrick Hosking Financial Editor

Shareholders get shirty over

latest owner of TM Lewin

£205 million facility to the business

through its HWSIL Finance vehicle.

Torque Brands’ shareholders have

claimed that Petra blocked them from

providing more capital to the business

and that Petra bought the rival Thomas

Pink brand knowing that it was one of

Torque’s acquisition targets. A spokes-

man from Torque Brands Holdings

Limited said: “In our view, this was a

loan-to-own strategy and we will be

pursuing all legal remedies once our

investigations are complete.”

HWSIL Finance refuted the claims

and said it was considering its own in-

vestigation into the management of the

business. “It already appears clear that

the operating expenses were over-

whelming for the company,” it said.

KPMG said the new owners would be

relaunching TM Lewin online and were

“considering... new high street stores”.

issues, which it has been addressing. It
had failed to meet the corporate gov-
ernance code on ten requirements in
the year to the end of April 2020,
including not having a functioning
remuneration committee after the
departure of two senior non-executive
directors in quick succession and tem-
porarily not having at least half the
board, excluding the chairman, occu-
pied by independent directors.
The challenges weighed on its share
price, making it harder to compete with
better-funded and higher-valued
health data companies.
Drayson revealed in November that

he had approached the board of Sen-

syne requesting approval to speak to

third-party investors to try to take the

company private.

The board had appointed JP Morgan

Cazenove and Peel Hunt, Sensyne’s

joint broker and nominated adviser

since the float, to consider any interest

from prospective buyers, alongside

alternative options, such as strategic

investment or the continued pursuit of

a secondary listing in the United States.

It had said at the time that “being

undervalued means that Sensyne

cannot execute on opportunities... to

become the leader in the ethical appli-