Stock Exchange blow for Incite

MOBILE phones company Incite Holdings, where rugby star-Lawrence Dallaglio is a director, has been censured by the Stock Exchange for misleading investors.

The chequered career of Incite, which has not yet completed a year on the stock market, took another turn for the worse today after it was rapped for breaching the relatively relaxed listing rules of junior stock exchange the Alternative Investment Market.

The company, for whom former England rugby captain Dallaglio is a market development director, was slammed for failing to disclose information to the market in the four months after it floated to the end of January when its shares were suspended.

A Stock Exchange statement said: 'Enquiries by the Exchange established that in the period from the company's admission to its suspension, the lack of revenue generated by the company and lack of working capital amounted to a change in its financial position, a change in the performance of its business and a change in its expectation of its performance, which if made public would be likely to have led to a substantial movement in the [share] price.'

Incite provides information to Spurs and West Ham supporters via their mobile phones. Failure to sign up further deals led to the financial crisis and the company has yet to produce its maiden results.

It also awaits the outcome of a second Stock Exchange probe surrounding share dealing in Incite by Richard Griffiths, chairman of City stockbroker Evolution Beeson Gregory.

With Incite's shares soaring as high as 75p, Griffiths dumped his 8% stake within a month of the 25p float, bagging a £1.3m profit. News of the sale was not reported until three months later, another breach of stock market rules.

Doggy tale that launched City career

THE ascent of Richard Griffiths to become chairman of Evolution Beeson Gregory, one of the City's more dynamic investment banks, at the age of 37, is a colourful yarn in a business full of tall stories.

Griffiths formed the business via deals culminating in the 2002 takeover of stockbroker Beeson Gregory in 2002, with old chum Alex Snow, a former Harlequins and England B rugby international.

He had already made a fortune in the bull market of the 1990s buying and selling shares but got out before the tech bubble collapse.

But his beginnings were humbler. A Welshman, he was brought up on his father's rented sheep farm in Powys, on which he worked after leaving school at 16.

After a spell in land dealing, Griffiths decided to go into stockbroking after meeting a greyhound trainer who told him his owners were stockbrokers and were so wealthy they were able to bet £10,000 on the dogs.