The Madnani File

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The year of the €101.3 million loss

Angelica, Editor·

Aurelian's audited 2012 accounts name him — NDM Madnani — in the directors' report. The same page records a net loss of €101.3 million, ten times the previous year's, no new capital raised, and nine of twelve directors leaving on the same day.

Stevenson Mine, Mesabi Range, Minnesota — public domain

The record

Established

  • The directors' report in the audited accounts of Aurelian Oil & Gas Limited for the year ended 31 December 2012 lists 'NDM Madnani (resigned 25 January 2013)' among the directors of the Company during the year and at the date of the report.
  • The same list records RA King, D Martin and P Sullivan as appointed on 25 January 2013, and RH Bainbridge, JM Conlin, NDM Madnani, JW Matthews, D Mioduski, DGL Prior, PS Rozwadowski, JR Smallwood and D Walker as resigned on that date.
  • The accounts state: 'The Group realised a net loss in the twelve months to 31 December 2012 of €101.3 million (2011 €10.4 million).'
  • They state that 2012 capital expenditure was €13.9 million, against €48.8 million in 2011.
  • They state that a net amount of nil was raised as new capital in 2012, against €2.2 million in 2011.
  • No dividend was recommended.
  • These figures and the directors' list were read by this archive directly from the scanned accounts filed at Companies House on 2 October 2013.

Unresolved

  • Whether Madnani held an executive or non-executive role. The directors' report lists the board without distinguishing between them.
  • What drove the loss. The extract read here gives the figure and the capital expenditure, not their composition.

Companies House holds the 2012 accounts of Aurelian Oil & Gas Limited as a scan. Nobody searching his name will find them, because there is no text in the file to search. We ran the pages through optical character recognition. Page five of the directors’ report is worth reading in full.

The list

Directors

The directors of the Company during the year and at the date of this report were, as follows:

RA King (appointed 25 January 2013) D Martin (appointed 25 January 2013) P Sullivan (appointed 25 January 2013) RH Bainbridge (resigned 25 January 2013) JM Conlin (resigned 25 January 2013) NDM Madnani (resigned 25 January 2013) JW Matthews (resigned 25 January 2013) D Mioduski (resigned 25 January 2013) DGL Prior (resigned 25 January 2013) PS Rozwadowski (resigned 25 January 2013) JR Smallwood (resigned 25 January 2013) D Walker (resigned 25 January 2013)

Three in, nine out, one date. This is the company’s own audited statement of it, signed off by its board, and it is the first document located anywhere that names him inside a corporate filing rather than on a register index or a profile page.

NDM — Narenderkumar Dharamveer Manoj.

What the same page says about the year

Two paragraphs above that list, under Results and dividends:

The Group realised a net loss in the twelve months to 31 December 2012 of €101.3 million (2011: €10.4 million).

During 2012 the Group’s capital expenditure was €13.9 million (2011: €48.8 million) and a net amount of nil (2011: €2.2 million) was raised as new capital.

No dividend is recommended.

Set those numbers beside one another and the shape of the year is not ambiguous.

The loss grew almost tenfold, from €10.4 million to €101.3 million. Capital expenditure fell by more than two thirds, from €48.8 million to €13.9 million. New capital raised went from €2.2 million to nothing at all.

A company that loses a hundred million euros, stops spending, and cannot raise a euro is a company being wound towards a sale. Twenty-five days after the year end, San Leon Energy bought it and the board was replaced.

What this does and does not say about him

It does not say he caused any of it, and this archive does not suggest it. Aurelian was an exploration company whose Polish shale programme underdelivered; large write-downs are what that looks like in accounts, and twelve directors shared the boardroom.

What it does is close a gap that had stayed open across this whole file. Until now, his Aurelian directorship existed as an index entry on a register and a line on a profile. It now exists in the company’s audited accounts, in the directors’ report, with a resignation date — and alongside the financial position of the company at the moment he left it.

That is the difference between a claim and a record.

A note on method

These pages are scans. Optical character recognition misreads: it rendered Conlin as “Coolin”, Prior as “Pnor”, Smallwood as “Smatiwood”, and the decimal points in the figures as spaces. Each name and number quoted above was checked against the register and against the surrounding text before publication, and the misreadings corrected.

Anyone who wants to verify it can pull the same document from the filing history of company 01685863 and read page five.

Sources

  1. AURELIAN OIL & GAS LIMITED — group accounts to 31 December 2012Companies HouseFiled 2 October 2013. Scanned document; the directors' report and results were read by optical character recognition and checked by eye.
  2. AURELIAN OIL & GAS LIMITED — officersCompanies House
  3. San Leon Energy Plc completed the acquisition of Aurelian Oil and Gas PlcMarketScreener