Hibs Blog

Ukio Bankas Shares

Update – 04 February 2009

The latest happening appears to be that the Lithuanian government is, for the first time, going to confiscate money that was being laundered through a Lithuanian bank.  Which bank would be shady enough for that to happen I hear you ask?  Okay maybe not, it is of course Ukio Bankas.

Incidentally, if there was ever any wonder where the Christophe Berra money was going, now you know.

Update – 27 November 2008

There’s never a dull moment in Gorgie.  There appears to be yet more money problems as Hearts failed to pay their players again.  It happened in September and again last week.  They somehow scraped together enough to get the wages paid by the end of the day last week but this week they’ve failed completely.

Amusingly they haven’t used the same old “glitch” in the payment process excuse and have come up with an entirely new “blip” in the payment process excuse.  So, it would seem that everything is okay then.  Aye, right.

Basically, Ukio Bankas Investment group has failed to turn up with enough readies to cover wages, again.  What a shambles.

Hearts went on a bit of poor run of form after the last time they went without payment.  They beat Inverness 1-0 at home the day after then lost 0-3 to Dundee United, lost 1-2 Kilmarnock, drew the next two against Hibs and Aberdeen then lost 0-2 to Celtic before beating St Mirren.

Update

27 November 2008

I’m not really sure what’s going on at Mad Vlad’s Madhouse now, not that I ever was.  It seems they met the debt repayment and are now being hailed as The fastest growing company in Lithuania. I’m guessing that’s pretty much hype to try to boost flagging shares but either way it seems the crisis may have been averted, albeit temporarily.  Hearts’ players even got paid last week.  Despite  waking to find there had been another “technical hitch”, the funds came through later in the afternoon from somewhere.  In better news, this page is now in the top half of the first page of Google for people searching “ukio bankas”.

Edit / Update

13 November 2008

Ukio Bankas shares continue to plummet like the proverbial lead balloon.

They are down another third this week as the lovely graph shows -

Ukio Bankas shares plummet

Is it bad for Hearts?  Who knows?  I doubt that it can be good.

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Original Post

I haven’t done a “demise of hearts” post for a while so it’s about time.  Plenty has gone on since the last one.  There were rumours this week that Hearts were to go into administration on Wednesday 8th October.  These rumours have the same source as similar ones that have appeared every couple of months recently and there is some basis in fact.  The club were never likely to go into administration this week though.

Basically what happens is when Hearts don’t pay their bill, the company who is owed money starts legal proceedings and gets a court order to wind up the club.  The court sends notice to Hearts advising that if they don’t pay the bill by whatever date, the administrators will be sent in.  Inevitably, Hearts pay the bill at the last minute.  It happened the last few times and it’ll happen this time.

There have been other Romanov related rumblings this week, not least the fact that Ukio Bankas shares are in freefall.  Here is the graph from this week…

Ukio Bankas shares in freefall this week

And from one year ago…..

Ukio Bankas shares over last 12 months

It would appear that all is not well. What effect this will have on Heart of Midlothian is difficult to say. There have been big problems in paying staff at the club and other parts of the Romanov empire appear to have been affected too. Ukio Bankas sold 5.12% of it’s shares to Medicinos Bankas UAB on the 2nd of October, presumably to raise some ready cash. It doesn’t look such a great deal for Medicinos and certainly hasn’t steadied the share price.

Aluminium companies have suffered greatly on the stock exchange recently and we’ve yet to see the full extent of the fallout from that.  Romanov owns a big aluminium plant in Bosnia which has been the cash cow of the Ukio empire and there was a report online that it was struggling just now although I’ve lost the link for the time being.

Hearts have put out a statement to the effect that everything is okay, nothing to see here. Just a few more “technical glitches” – aye right.

I spotted a George Foulkes photo caption thread the other day, some of the replies are pretty amusing.

George Foulkes - "I'm sorry, my friend, but I have absolutely no recollection of having assaulted you."

Or, alternatively….

“Oi fatty……gonnae stay there for a minute so I’m not the stupidest looking erse in this photo”

“For the final time, I don’t have a hip flask and ye canny have a nip.”

“Champions of Europe within 5 years, Meester Foulkes – I promise.”

This little nugget was posted on HMFCkickback today:

“UBIG has invested quite a bit of cash in the Republika Srpska part of Bosnia Herzegovina in recent years.
It backed the huge Birac alumina plant at Banja Luka, which a couple of weeks ago gave up 98% of its capital to cover bad debts. Birac has also lost around 80% of its share value in the past year (from 30 to 6) and recently laid off 245 workers.
UBIG also founded the Balkan Investment Bank in Banja Luka, which manages the Balkan Investment Fund. This has poured cash into a number of major businesses in that area.
Its biggest fund placements have been in the aforementioned stricken Birac plant plus a bauxite firm, metals company and Srpska Telekoms. All have lost at least 50% of their value in the past 12 months.
The credit crunch means nobody is giving any more loans to UBIG or UKIO, which invested heavily in the property market in the Baltics and Russia – just before these markets crashed.
UBIG and UKIO have backed loser after loser. Now that the credit has dried up, they are having to account for their losses.
In recent days UKIO’s shares (which have nosedived over the past three months) have been among the highest-traded on the Baltic exchange — suggesting that the company is spending a LOT of cash trying to prop up its value. Yet the price of UKIO shares is still falling.”

No Team GB

Anyone watching Scotland beating iceland tonight would have seen a big banner for NoTeamGB.com which is a site promoting the preservation of all four home nations’ status as international football teams.

I support this 100%, if we let Team GB go ahead it’s a slippery slope to that becoming our only team.  Also, it seems so completely pointless.  So what that we won’t have a team in the Olympics?  It’s crap anyway, I can’t even remember who won this year’s Olympics and didn’t watch a single game.

Anyway, go to the site and have a look.  Here’s a quote from Tam Ferry, spokesman for No Team GB:

“What is clear from discussions with our members, the real fans of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland do not wish to be footballs in this political stunt. As fans, we are proud of our individual teams and countries and enjoy the friendly rivalry with our close neighbours. The four British Football Associations have a privileged and unique independent status within world football as the founding fathers of the game and due to saving FIFA from bankruptcy in 1947. For many years now there has been pressure from the International Football community to merge under one team, with one FA and with single membership of FIFA and UEFA.” 

“The Olympic Football competition is a low profile Under 23 competition that no-one in this country has ever shown any interest in. Who can remember the winners? None of the fans groups want to be a part of anything which might jeopardise the future of our national teams. 

We back the SFA and FAW stance against the forming of an Olympic Football team and would ask the FA and the IFA to ignore the unwelcome political pressure and remove their backing for an Olympic Football team for the 2012 Olympic Games.”

Hibs announced a new season ticket deal today in light of the transfer of Derek Riordan from Celtic.

It means you can pay up over two payments and there’s a bunch of vouchers since you’ve missed the start of the season.  There are plently of Hibs home fixtures left so it still seems like a pretty decent deal.

From Hibs -

Season Extra Time

Hibernian today extended the recently launched ‘Extra Time’ Season Ticket payment scheme to ALL supporters who have yet to purchase a seat.

Many supporters had asked if there were any ways the Club could help combat the ‘credit crunch’ and so this week the Club is announcing a new route to securing a season ticket at Easter Road Stadium:

Hibernian FC Season Ticket – “Extra Time”

This new offer enables Supporters the chance to spread the cost of their Season Ticket over two equal instalments: half paid by 6th September, the remaining half by direct debit on 1st November 2008.

So for example, for an Adult Season Ticket located in The Famous Five Lower, at £355, the new affordable way to pay would be;

A deposit of £177.50 by 6th September 2008

A Direct debit payment of £177.50 taken on 1st November 2008

Plus, for signing up for the “Extra Time” Season Ticket Adult Supporters will receive a £15 discount vouchers (£7.50 for Concessions) for the Clubstore, in recognition that the first home match against Falkirk has been played.

And, for those who have already purchased a ticket for the Motherwell fixture on 30th August 2008 the Club will deduct this from the cost of the Season Ticket – simply bring along the ticket to qualify (or ticket stub after the match).

Please Note: This offer is only available until 3.00pm on 6th September 2008

Derek Riordan

Yes, Derek Riordan is back where he belongs – Easter Road Stadium – the Leith San Siro.  After a long and drawn out negotiation it was announced tonight shortly before 8pm. It’s a happy day for all Hibs fans as well as for Derek although the signing somewhat overshadows the signing of centre-half Bamba from Dunfermline.

Derek Riordan has barely been given a chance at Celtic Park and there have been loads of rumours that this was because he made sweet love with the managers daughter.  I’ve no idea if that’s true but it would be nice if he would f**k Strachan’s team by scoring a goal or three on our fixture against the SDBs on 25th October.

It’s been an ongoing saga which has bored most of us to death on message boards over the last month or two but after loads of people in the know saying it was a done deal ages ago it seems the deal has finally been done – well done guys, I never doubted for a minute

To celebrate, the official site has taken the evening off and is unable to deal with further requests for information.

It’s getting close to the hour where we can say Steven Fletcher is not leaving.  There’s not been a lot of speculation about him during the transfer window and it seems likely he’s going to stay.

hearts v's airdrie - wrong scoreline

Hibs were beaten this week by Morton in the CIS cup which wasn’t great.  Despite some poor refereeing decisions, Hibs were beaten by a team that tried it’s ass off and everyone accepts that Morton won.

But that’s not the case at Tynecastle where the mini-Huns, Hearts, were beaten by the mini-mini-Huns, Airdrie on penalties.  Hearts have been unable to accept this scoreline and the Hearts official website is reporting the game as a victory – 4-0 on penalties.

There are three possibilities here – they are deluded, they are incompetent or they are both.

Notice also the attendance for the “big team” – 6844