CITY WHISPERS: Skin in the game? Devro investors still don’t know

They call it the stealthy season – the Christmas and New Year period when companies are known to sneak out uncomfortable announcements.

So shareholders in devro could be forgiven for raising an eyebrow when the sausage skin maker on the receiving end of a £667m bid from Germany’s Rethmann Group told investors on Dec. 22 of a delay in sending the legal ‘warts-and-all’ acquisition document.

Normally, such information must be sent to shareholders 28 days after the deal was announced – which in Devro’s case was in November.

But Devro said that “in light of the holiday season and court availability,” investors would have to wait until January 15.

Getting a hold of a Scottish judge to approve the so-called ‘scheme of arrangement’ at this time of year is clearly easier said than done.

Gavin Patterson is not looking for another full-time job

One business veteran who will have a lot more free time this year is former BT boss Gavin Patterson.

He is about to step down from his current role at US cloud-based software group Salesforce at the end of this month.

Patterson is already involved as chairman and trustee of the charity Business in the Community and on a board position at the London School of Economics.

But he’s not looking for another full-time job, he told Whispers.

“I will not take another leadership position,” said the 55-year-old. ‘I’m going to focus on supervisory board positions and advisory work.’

Yes, certainly no need for a full-time job after making an estimated £11 million last year.

RS Group

RS Groupthe industrial equipment maker formerly known as Electrocomponents welcomed Mawer Investment Management to its register of shareholders in December, it was revealed last week.

Canadian company Mawer took a 5.1 percent stake in RS, one of the non-household names of the FTSE 100.

But, inconveniently for RS, the transaction came shortly before it published its light-hearted annual review in the form of a poem in Canada’s Financial Post publication.

Mawer tells readers, “Keep calm and prepare. Keep thinking long term. Choose ‘boring’ over flair.’ Ouch.

Novolipetsk Steel is delisted from LSE

The London Stock Exchange is bidding farewell to another Russian company later this month.

Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), the country’s largest steelmaker, will delist its global depositary shares — certificates representing its shares — on January 18.

Other major groups leaving since the invasion of Ukraine are Gazprom and Rosneft.

All of these companies were on a list of 27 companies whose shares were suspended by the LSE last March, when Russian companies saw the value of their shares fall.