The fall from grace continued at Monitise, the former tech darling of AIM, as its chief executive threw in the towel. The departure of Elizabeth Buse, who will be replaced by deputy chief executive Lee Cameron, came as the mobile payments firm revealed it made a huge annual pre-tax loss of £227.4m, while revenues fell 6 per cent to £89.7m.
Investors headed for the exit as the share price more than halved, down 3.01p to 2.8p.
Monitise’s growth started to run out of steam last year. When its founder and co-chief executive, Alastair Lukies, failed to sell the company, he quit in March and left former Visa executive Ms Buse in sole charge. Ms Buse was forced to go back to the drawing board but her attempts to turn the ailing business around have proved fruitless.
Not long ago, Monitise was one of the UK’s “unicorn” companies – those with valuations of $1bn or more. After a string of profit warnings and a failed turnaround, its market capitalisation now stands at just above £60m.
Meanwhile the promise of monetary stimulus in China helped Japanese stocks to their best day for seven years and in turn gave the FTSE 100 a boost.
Better-than-expected jobs data, triggering renewed speculation over the possibility of a rise in US interest rates next week, took some of the shine off the UK’s benchmark index, but it still closed 82.91 points higher at 6,229.01.
Miners were lifted by the prospect of stimulus from China, the world’s largest importer of industrial metals. Glencore gained 6.6p at 144.2p, BHP Billiton rose 40p to 1,127p, while Anglo American jumped 39p to 742.9p.
Hargreaves Lansdown was the top blue-chip riser, up 78p to 1,193p, as the fund supermarket’s annual results revealed an 18 per cent rise in assets under management to £55bn and the addition of 84,000 new customers.
Shares in Virgin Money dropped 19.5p to 404p as US billionaire Wilbur Ross dumped another load of stock. Ross is offloading 50 million shares in the challenger bank at 405p for upwards of £200m, which follows the sale of 60 million shares in April.
