SpinVox Shareholders Get Virtually Nothing After Debt Payback
Spinvox says it’s fully repaid a £30 million bridging loan that kept it afloat until its sale to Nuance last month.
The voicemail-to-text company had accepted the mezzanine loan from the Tisbury fund in July after falling in to a financial mess. The company has now told Companies House it has paid it back in full.
The payback is just one of those to come from the $102.5 million (£63.5 million) sale – but these debts the company racked up have left shareholders with virtually nothing…
After repayments, all shareholders received a total of only £600 ($968) and staff who, as we revealed last year, accepted stock instead of salary during the summer, are getting nothing, according to a memo obtained by BBC News.
Update: From Nuance PR: “Those who accepted stock options in lieu of salary did receive payment of their foregone salary in connection with the transaction.”
Update from SpinVox staff who now (temporarily) work for said faceless mega-corporation: those who spent years assuming their gifted stock options would be worth something in a sale were similarly disappointed. A high proportion of the technical staff are silently job hunting as it’s becoming clear Nuance is only really interested in absorbing our technology into their own systems.
@Anonymous,
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SpinVox was notoriously flinty in giving stock to employees (outside of the inner circle of execs). So no one should be too shocked to receive nada in stock. As for the inner circle of cronies, they do get to keep the big gold-plated trophies that Christina bestowed on them annually with much fanfare (no kidding) in a theatre of the absurd.
As for Christina Domecq, if there is any justice in the world, she has earned enough of a reputation in the googleage that she will not be able to repeat once again the devastation she inflicted on employees and investors in New Horizons in New York and than again at SpinVox in the UK. It is amazing that she developed such a high profile image as a entrepeneurial wunderkind in the UK when her only significant experience proved quite the opposite in the New Horizons bankruptcy/scandal just a few years earlier.
The good news for justice seekers is that Nuance is a publicly-traded company in the U.S., and therefore it will need to make disclosures about SpinVox finances, sooner or later.
Nobody knows what Nuance plans for Spinvox are just yet there is a lot of speculation but its still early days. Not all spinvox Staff feel like “Anonymous” a lot of them are looking forward to being led by a management team that have a proven track record and a solid foundation. Spinvox has an excellent team of staff that are not only extremely talented and professional but from what I hear a great bunch to work with!!
The funny thing is “asecretadmirer”, as I’m sure you know, Nuance sat in the building next door for at least 3 months before the acquisition doing the whole Due Diligence thing. Of *course* they know what they’re going to do with SpinVox. You don’t pay that much money and set off on such a process without having any clue what you’re going to do with a company’s staff and technology. What’s even more funny is that whole devious and dishonest process they went though of holding “open days” in Marlow and Cambridge and trying to make SpinVox’s best staff quit by promising jobs after the acquisition – in an obvious attempt to devalue the company – and then reneging on the deals after they were bought.
Anonymous , I hear what your saying but the people responsible for your job security going down the pan are previous management . They abused their positions and they money that was invested into Spinvox.As an employee of spinvox Im sure you are well aware of the lax attitude to spending. Spinvox management treated Spinvox as a succesffull company turning a profit not a multi million pound start up. I think you need to be relaistic about what you expect from a large corporation such as Nuance of course they know what they plan to do and have done extensive due diligence but the would be stupid to lay there cards on the table straight away. Time will tell , I know there is a concern with regard to staff losses but at least the Spinvox was purchased and staff will receive notice periods and redundancy which is a a lot more than they would have received has Spinvox sunk!
Well as they’ve just notified most/all of the operations side that the headcount is to expensive, we’re all technically on notice pending the consultation process. Guess the cards are being laid as we speak.