Fintech
The Concerned Shareholders of FAR Resources Ltd. Look Forward to Putting an Immediate End to the Entrenched Incumbent Management and Board’s Irresponsible Destruction of Shareholder Value
- The Concerned Shareholders, together with other shareholders who are supportive of change at FAR, have already received expressions of support from shareholders holding over 45% of the shares entitled to be voted at the Meeting.
- The Concerned Shareholders demand that Mr. John Gammack and Mr. Robert Dinning resign from the board of FAR immediately.
- The Concerned Shareholders highlight that the entrenched Management and Board are responsible for share underperformance and significant value destruction.
- The incumbent Board have no coherent strategy and have been in their current roles for approximately 18 months. In that time, they have mismanaged assets and failed to adopt basic corporate governance practices.
Vancouver, British Columbia–(Newsfile Corp. – October 29, 2021) – Scott Taylor, who, together with joint actors Christina Barnard, Jason Barnard and affiliates (collectively, with Mr. Taylor, “we” or the “Concerned Shareholders”), hold directly and indirectly approximately 7.7%% of the issued and outstanding common shares of FAR Resources Ltd. (CSE: FAT) (FSE: F0R) (OTC Pink: FRRSF) (“FAR” or the “Company”) that are entitled to be voted at the Meeting. As a result of discussions with other shareholders who are supportive of change at FAR, the Concerned Shareholders have already received expressions of support from shareholders (themselves included) holding over 45% of the shares entitled to be voted at the Meeting. It should be noted that the Concerned Shareholders have filed a notice (the “Notice”) with FAR for the nomination of three highly qualified and experienced directors to be elected to the board of the Company at the annual meeting of the Company that was to be held on November 12, 2021 (the “Meeting”), prior to FAR unjustifiably postponing the meeting to December 7, 2021.
The Concerned Shareholders believe the Company’s current Board and Management lack relevant experience and more importantly have failed to show any progress in developing the Company’s promising assets since taking the reigns of the company 18 months ago.
Ultimately, the entrenched management and Board bear responsibility for share value, or unfortunately in this instance, share value destruction. In their 18 months at the helm, the incumbent directors can point to virtually no accomplishments and in fact, as outlined below, their tenure has been defined with questionable decisions. Equally important is a total lack of shareholder engagement and we believe the current share price is representative of the apathy demonstrated by this incumbent management and Board. It is a sad situation that FAR’s share price has languished and declined under the poor stewardship of the entrenched Management and Board while comparative companies in FAR’s peer group, with lithium assets, have seen significant increases in shareholder wealth. WHY NOT US?
The incumbent Board have no coherent strategy notwithstanding they have been in their current roles for approximately 18 months. In that time, they have mismanaged assets and failed to adopt basic corporate governance practices as evidenced by the following:
- Since their appointment to the Board, some 18 months ago, they have failed to hold an Annual Shareholders Meeting and thereby seek shareholder approval for their performance via an election of Directors.
- The Board’s response upon learning that shareholders were going to nominate an alternate slate of Directors was to immediately delay a long overdue meeting by a month.
- The Company has only two (2) named Officers: Mr. John Gammack, as President & Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) and Mr. Robert G. Dinning, CPA as Chief Financial Officer who was appointed by Mr. Gammack himself.
- The Company has only two (2) Directors: Mr. John Gammack and Mr. Robert Dinning. A key fiduciary role for Directors is to provide oversight of management. Clearly, Mr. Gammack and Dinning are in an inescapable conflict situation as the only Directors in that they can hardly provide effective oversight of themselves in their dual roles as Officers.
- Neither Mr. Gammack nor Mr. Dinning were elected by shareholders. These individuals were appointed by previous board members via personal and business relationships which makes their failure to hold a timely election all the more outrageous.
- Proper disclosure of corporate events has been an abysmal failure under the current Board. Retractions and corrections or late disclosure have been commonplace over the past 18 months.
The Concerned Shareholders question Mr. Gammack’s experience overseeing a public exploration company, as there doesn’t appear to be any discernable evidence to suggest Mr. Gammack is qualified to steward your investment. Additionally, we raise questions about Mr. Dinning and Mr. Gammack’s relationship as they have had a decades long friendship and there is no independence or oversight whatsoever from the current Board of Directors, demonstrating them to be clearly interlocked. As such this raises serious questions of conflicts of interest, with only two board members, all decisions are self-directed and self-approved by the same two board members who simply cannot be believed to be acting independently in their decisions on such issues as asset development, compensation, risk taking, negotiations on M&A activity, and use of proceeds.
It has been abundantly clear for quite some time that the Board of FAR Resources is dysfunctional and as a result your investment in FAR, under current leadership, is at serious risk. Immediate change is needed to the entrenched Board of Directors and Management of the Company in order to change from the current path of value destruction and to move to creating sustainable shareholder value. The Concerned Shareholders are proposing a new Board and Management team that’s committed to FAR’s success by aggressively developing valuable Lithium assets, engaging with shareholders and attracting new investors and capital.
FAR cannot move forward until the festering issue of the boards lack of accountability to shareholders is settled.
Shareholders are urged to stop the Board and Management from further entrenching themselves and destroying shareholder value, by supporting the Concerned Shareholders efforts to restore responsible stewardship of your Company and in turn increase shareholder wealth to all, once our circular is filed.
The Concerned Shareholders would like to thank the true owners of FAR for their tremendous support to date. This support comes from independent shareholders that want the Company to know that they are not fooled but are instead increasingly frustrated and totally disgusted by the unethical and frantic entrenchment tactics employed for personal benefits over the interests of the Company.
The Concerned Shareholders anticipate filing a comprehensive proxy circular, setting out their plans for the company, together with their proxy in short order. In addition, we will be launching our website detailing our value creation plans for FAR and allowing for optimal communication with shareholders.
Advisors
The Concerned Shareholders have engaged Gryphon Advisors Inc, who are acting as strategic shareholder communications and proxy advisor. Gryphon’s responsibility will include providing strategic advice and advising the Concerned Shareholders with respect to the annual general meeting and proxy protocol.
Farris LLP have also been hired and are acting as legal advisors to a Concerned Shareholder.
For more information regarding the Concerned Shareholders’ position please contact:
Gryphon Advisors Inc.
Tel: 1.833.292.5847
Email: [email protected]
Information in Support of Public Broadcast Solicitation
The information contained in this press release does not and is not meant to constitute a solicitation of a proxy within the meaning of applicable securities laws. As disclosed in the Concerned Shareholders’ news release and Notice of Nominations dated October 7, 2021 (as confirmed October 12, 2021) the Concerned Shareholders have submitted nominees for election to the Company’s board of directors at the Meeting of shareholders scheduled for December 7, 2021 (the “Meeting”), shareholders are not being asked at this time to execute a proxy in favour of any matter. In connection with the Meeting, the Concerned Shareholders will file a dissident information circular in due course in compliance with applicable securities laws. In the meantime, for information regarding the Concerned Shareholders Nominees, please refer to the Concerned Shareholder’s news release dated October 7, 2021. Any right for revocation of a proxy submitted in connection with the election of the Nominees will be set out in the dissident information circular or a document referred to therein.
The information contained herein, and any solicitation made by the Concerned Shareholders in advance of the Meeting, is or will be, as applicable, made by the Concerned Shareholders and not by or on behalf of the management of FAR. All costs incurred for any solicitation will be borne by the Concerned Shareholders, provided that, subject to applicable law, the Concerned Shareholders may seek reimbursement from FAR of the Concerned Shareholders’ out-of-pocket expenses, including proxy solicitation expenses and legal fees, incurred in connection with a successful reconstitution of the Company’s board of directors. The Concerned Shareholders are not soliciting proxies in connection with a general meeting of shareholders of the Company at this time.
The Concerned Shareholders may engage the services of one or more agents and authorize other persons to assist in soliciting proxies on behalf of the Concerned Shareholders. Any proxies solicited by or on behalf of the Concerned Shareholders, including by any other agent retained by the Concerned Shareholders, may be solicited pursuant to a dissident information circular or by way of public broadcast, including through press releases, speeches or publications and by any other manner permitted under Canadian corporate and securities laws. Any such proxies may be revoked by instrument in writing executed by a shareholder or by his or her attorney authorized in writing or, if the shareholder is a body corporate, by an officer or attorney thereof duly authorized or by any other manner permitted by law.
The registered address of FAR is located at Suite 400 – 725 Granville St., Vancouver, BC, V7Y 1G5, Canada and its head office is located at #510 – 580 Hornby St., Vancouver, BC, V6C 3B6, Canada. A copy of this press release may be obtained on FAR’s SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.
Mr. Taylor is a resident of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, USA, and the other Concerned Shareholders are each of resident of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101264
Modern brands stake on influencer marketing, with 76% of users making a purchase after seeing a product on social media.The cryptocurrency industry is no exception to this trend. However, promoting crypto products through influencer marketing can be particularly challenging. Crypto influencers pose a significant risk to a brand’s reputation and ROI due to rampant scams. Approximately 80% of channels provide fake statistics, including followers counts and engagement metrics. Additionally, this niche is characterized by high CPMs, which can increase the risk of financial loss for brands.
In this article Nadia Bubennnikova, Head of agency Famesters, will explore the most important things to look for in crypto channels to find the perfect match for influencer marketing collaborations.
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Comments
There are several levels related to this point.
LEVEL 1
Analyze approximately 10 of the channel’s latest videos, looking through the comments to ensure they are not purchased from dubious sources. For example, such comments as “Yes sir, great video!”; “Thanks!”; “Love you man!”; “Quality content”, and others most certainly are bot-generated and should be avoided.
Just to compare:
LEVEL 2
Don’t rush to conclude that you’ve discovered the perfect crypto channel just because you’ve come across some logical comments that align with the video’s topic. This may seem controversial, but it’s important to dive deeper. When you encounter a channel with logical comments, ensure that they are unique and not duplicated under the description box. Some creators are smarter than just buying comments from the first link that Google shows you when you search “buy YouTube comments”. They generate topics, provide multiple examples, or upload lists of examples, all produced by AI. You can either manually review the comments or use a script to parse all the YouTube comments into an Excel file. Then, add a formula to highlight any duplicates.
LEVEL 3
It is also a must to check the names of the profiles that leave the comments: most of the bot-generated comments are easy to track: they will all have the usernames made of random symbols and numbers, random first and last name combinations, “Habibi”, etc. No profile pictures on all comments is also a red flag.
LEVEL 4
Another important factor to consider when assessing comment authenticity is the posting date. If all the comments were posted on the same day, it’s likely that the traffic was purchased.
2. Average views number per video
This is indeed one of the key metrics to consider when selecting an influencer for collaboration, regardless of the product type. What specific factors should we focus on?
First & foremost: the views dynamics on the channel. The most desirable type of YouTube channel in terms of views is one that maintains stable viewership across all of its videos. This stability serves as proof of an active and loyal audience genuinely interested in the creator’s content, unlike channels where views vary significantly from one video to another.
Many unauthentic crypto channels not only buy YouTube comments but also invest in increasing video views to create the impression of stability. So, what exactly should we look at in terms of views? Firstly, calculate the average number of views based on the ten latest videos. Then, compare this figure to the views of the most recent videos posted within the past week. If you notice that these new videos have nearly the same number of views as those posted a month or two ago, it’s a clear red flag. Typically, a YouTube channel experiences lower views on new videos, with the number increasing organically each day as the audience engages with the content. If you see a video posted just three days ago already garnering 30k views, matching the total views of older videos, it’s a sign of fraudulent traffic purchased to create the illusion of view stability.
3. Influencer’s channel statistics
The primary statistics of interest are region and demographic split, and sometimes the device types of the viewers.
LEVEL 1
When reviewing the shared statistics, the first step is to request a video screencast instead of a simple screenshot. This is because it takes more time to organically edit a video than a screenshot, making it harder to manipulate the statistics. If the creator refuses, step two (if only screenshots are provided) is to download them and check the file’s properties on your computer. Look for details such as whether it was created with Adobe Photoshop or the color profile, typically Adobe RGB, to determine if the screenshot has been edited.
LEVEL 2
After confirming the authenticity of the stats screenshot, it’s crucial to analyze the data. For instance, if you’re examining a channel conducted in Spanish with all videos filmed in the same language, it would raise concerns to find a significant audience from countries like India or Turkey. This discrepancy, where the audience doesn’t align with regions known for speaking the language, is a red flag.
If we’re considering an English-language crypto channel, it typically suggests an international audience, as English’s global use for quality educational content on niche topics like crypto. However, certain considerations apply. For instance, if an English-speaking channel shows a significant percentage of Polish viewers (15% to 30%) without any mention of the Polish language, it could indicate fake followers and views. However, if the channel’s creator is Polish, occasionally posts videos in Polish alongside English, and receives Polish comments, it’s important not to rush to conclusions.
Example of statistics
Wrapping up
These are the main factors to consider when selecting an influencer to promote your crypto product. Once you’ve launched the campaign, there are also some markers to show which creators did bring the authentic traffic and which used some tools to create the illusion of an active and engaged audience. While this may seem obvious, it’s still worth mentioning. After the video is posted, allow 5-7 days for it to accumulate a basic number of views, then check performance metrics such as views, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), signups, and conversion rate (CR) from clicks to signups.
If you overlooked some red flags when selecting crypto channels for your launch, you might find the following outcomes: channels with high views numbers and high CTRs, demonstrating the real interest of the audience, yet with remarkably low conversion rates. In the worst-case scenario, you might witness thousands of clicks resulting in zero to just a few signups. While this might suggest technical issues in other industries, in crypto campaigns it indicates that the creator engaged in the campaign not only bought fake views and comments but also link clicks. And this happens more often than you may realize.
Summing up, choosing the right crypto creator to promote your product is indeed a tricky job that requires a lot of resources to be put into the search process.
Author
Nadia Bubennikova, Head of agency at Famesters
The BIS, along with seven leading central banks and a cohort of private financial firms, has embarked on an ambitious venture known as Project Agorá.
Named after the Greek word for “marketplace,” this initiative stands at the forefront of exploring the potential of tokenisation to significantly enhance the operational efficiency of the monetary system worldwide.
Central to this pioneering project are the Bank of France (on behalf of the Eurosystem), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These institutions have joined forces under the banner of Project Agorá, in partnership with an extensive assembly of private financial entities convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF).
At the heart of Project Agorá is the pursuit of integrating tokenised commercial bank deposits with tokenised wholesale central bank money within a unified, public-private programmable financial platform. By harnessing the advanced capabilities of smart contracts and programmability, the project aspires to unlock new transactional possibilities that were previously infeasible or impractical, thereby fostering novel opportunities that could benefit businesses and consumers alike.
The collaborative effort seeks to address and surmount a variety of structural inefficiencies that currently plague cross-border payments. These challenges include disparate legal, regulatory, and technical standards; varying operating hours and time zones; and the heightened complexity associated with conducting financial integrity checks (such as anti-money laundering and customer verification procedures), which are often redundantly executed across multiple stages of a single transaction due to the involvement of several intermediaries.
As a beacon of experimental and exploratory projects, the BIS Innovation Hub is committed to delivering public goods to the global central banking community through initiatives like Project Agorá. In line with this mission, the BIS will soon issue a call for expressions of interest from private financial institutions eager to contribute to this ground-breaking project. The IIF will facilitate the involvement of private sector participants, extending an invitation to regulated financial institutions representing each of the seven aforementioned currencies to partake in this transformative endeavour.
Source: fintech.globa
The post Central banks and the FinTech sector unite to change global payments space appeared first on HIPTHER Alerts.
TD Bank has inked a multi-year deal with Google Cloud as it looks to streamline the development and deployment of new products and services.
The deal will see the Canadian banking group integrate the vendor’s cloud services into a wider portion of its technology solutions portfolio, a move which TD expects will enable it “to respond quickly to changing customer expectations by rolling out new features, updates, or entirely new financial products at an accelerated pace”.
This marks an expansion of the already established relationship between TD Bank and Google Cloud after the group previously adopted the vendor’s Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for TD Securities Automated Trading (TDSAT), the Chicago-based subsidiary of its investment banking unit, TD Securities.
TDSAT uses GKE for process automation and quantitative modelling across fixed income markets, resulting in the development of a “data-driven research platform” capable of processing large research workloads in trading.
Dan Bosman, SVP and CIO of TD Securities, claims the infrastructure has so far supported TDSAT with “compute-intensive quantitative analysis” while expanding the subsidiary’s “trading volumes and portfolio size”.
TD’s new partnership with Google Cloud will see the group attempt to replicate the same level of success across its entire portfolio.
Source: fintechfutures.com
The post TD Bank inks multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud appeared first on HIPTHER Alerts.
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