Jones picks up £292,973 for Dunloe stake

Entrepreneur and former accountant Mr Tom Jones made a profit of £292,973 (€371,999) from the sale on Wednesday of 18.6 million Dunloe Ewart shares to reclusive builder Mr Liam Carroll.

Mr Jones sold the shares at 50 cents having bought them just nine days earlier, on Monday, October 2nd, for an average of 48 cents per share.

The former manager with Price Waterhouse is known to directors of Orb Estates, the Jersey-based company currently conducting a due diligence exercise on Dunloe. However, that company is understood to have assured Dunloe at the time of Mr Jones's purchase he was not acting for it.

Mr Jones has interests in the IT sector and retail foods business, as well as in the property sector. He reportedly owed MMI Stockbrokers up to £1 million at the time of that firm's collapse early last year.

There were further sales of Dunloe shares yesterday, with 2.42 million shares, or just more than 0.5 per cent of the company, changing hands. Mr Carroll is understood to have been behind the bulk of these purchases. The shares closed at 50 cents, up one cent.

Information published yesterday by the Stock Exchange revealed Vantive Holdings, an investment company used by Mr Carroll, made three purchases of Dunloe shares on Wednesday.

As well as the 18.6 million shares bought from Mr Jones, Vantive also bought 462,717 from a second, unidentified vendor and 454,563 from a third, unidentified vendor.

The exchange said the purchase by Vantive meant the company now owns 73.9 million Dunloe shares or 19.07 per cent of the company. Yesterday's share purchases most likely bring that figure to in excess of 20 per cent. The reason Mr Carroll is building up a stake in Dunloe is not clear.

The due diligence exercise being conducted by Orb Estates is due to end today. Mr Noel Smyth, chairman of Dunloe Ewart, has said he would expect the Jersey company to declare its next move within a week.

Mr Sam Nolan, an Irish financier based in the Channel Islands, is the backer of the Orb Estates approach. He is a director and shareholder in Lynch Talbot, a Jersey-based venture capital company which took over Orb Estates earlier this year.

Up to June 1999 Mr Nolan was a director of Cater Allen Trust Company, a Channel Islands subsidiary of Abbey National. Mr Tom Kavanagh, liquidator to MMI Stockbrokers, wanted Mr Nolan to give evidence in a High Court action he took concerning funds from a Cater Allen nominee account with MMI. The fraud action against seven former MMI directors collapsed.

Lynch Talbot manages $250 million in investments on behalf of high net worth individuals. It operates four separate funds, one of which, the euro and UK Property Fund LP, provides equity finance to UK and European property transactions.

It advanced loans to Orb Estates last year in order to finance the acquisition of its rival, Gander, for £57 million sterling. The loans were converted into shares when Orb Estates proved unable to repay the loans and under Stock Exchange rules Lynch Talbot was required to bid for the rest of the company at 60p sterling, considerably less than its net asset value of 114p sterling.