A lawsuit by Mark Sellers, former chairman of Premier Exhibitions and through Sellers Capital owns 15.4 million shares in the company, is suing George Wight Jr. and his companies, Armada Enterprises and Armada Group of Florida. In 2014, Sellers agreed to sell his majority stake in Premier for $16.2 million. Sellers alleges Wight reneged on the deal. And he also alleges Wight misled the Premier board and shareholders about the money available to complete the deal. Sellers is requesting that a federal judge force Wight to follow through with original deal terms, seeks more than $12.5 million in damages. Currently Premier is the process of merging with Dinoking Tech. Dinoking exhibits animatronic dinosaurs. The deal is yet to be approved by the shareholders (to be voted on in October) and would allow Premier to acquire all shares of Dinoking for $6.4 million and its principal shareholder, Daoping Bao, will take control of the company.
Needless to say, this is going to cause some problems for the Dinoking merger. If the lawsuit succeeds, it would force Wight to consummate the original deal with Sellers. Not that everyone is entirely convinced of the Dinoking deal. There are nagging questions about Dinoking and its capital sourcing. And Andrew Shapiro who is president of Lawndale Capital Management with a five percent stake is quoted as saying:
Similarly, if new, more skilled board and management were assembled, Lawndale might be willing to participate in a rights offering to all shareholders to raise additional equity supporting a debt refinancing that together might prove to be a superior bid to that of Dinoking and its questionable capital sourcing.
Source: HopCat owner files $12.5M lawsuit over Titanic shipwreck deal(9 Sep 2015,mlive.com)
Additional articles on Premier of note:
‘Titanic’ shareholders cast doubt over merger, stunned that Chinese corruption suspect’s teenage daughter, Linda Ching, is financier(4 Sept 2015,South China Morning Post)
Premier Exhibitions – Shareholders Stunned Over Suspected Graft(4 Sep 2015, Valuewalk)
Premier Exhibitions : releases the following response regarding a potential financier linked to Michael Ching Mo Yeung(9 Sep 2015,4-traders.com)
Hat tip to Bill Willard on alerting me to this news.
