Blue Star Capital PLC (LON:BLU) Chief Executive Officer Tony Fabrizi caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the further investment in SatoshiPay
Q1: Now, Blue Star has bought shares in SatoshiPay on 3 occasions and unusually, on 2 occasions from existing shareholders. Why are you so keen when others appear to be willing to sell?
A1: Our view is that SatoshiPay has the potential to be a very large company, we, obviously, have acquired shares now from willing sellers so they’ll obviously have a slightly different view from us. We’re very much of the opinion that SatoshiPay and the market is focussing on nanopayments and the sector is potentially a huge one, there’s nothing we can see competing directly with them at the moment. If they’re successful, which we believe they hopefully will be, then we believe SatoshiPay have significant value and we’re delighted to have bought more shares in SatoshiPay at the same valuation that we acquired them 6 months ago.
Q2: Does that mean that you’ll be buying more shares in SatoshiPay?
A2: I think, in the foreseeable future, it’ll be difficult for Blue Star Capital to acquire anymore share in SatoshiPay for a couple of technical reasons. One is under the AIM rules, we’re probably prohibited from buying anymore, we’ve acquired stakes on 3 occasions in SatoshiPay so I think that’s probably a limit under the AIM rules for us. Obviously, if we do other things then we may be able to buy more shares in SatoshiPay, obviously there’s always the possibility at some point in the future that SatoshiPay may be reversed into Blue Star Capital so we’re very happy with the current position.
Q3: You’ve granted over 110 million warrants, why was that?
A3: Yes, we’ve actually granted 110 million warrants and the bulk of those were given to Coinsilium as part of the consideration that we paid. The reasoning for that, from their side, was an anti-embarrassment clause that they wanted, they can obviously see that although they were happy to sell the shares, they could obviously see that SatoshiPay had the potential and they felt it was important to them to get some protection if SatoshiPay could prove to be a very successful business. So, the warrants give them that protection and equally from our side, there was a 300% premium, a 200% premium to the current placing price so additional cash into Blue Star Capital and they have a limited life as well. There were some warrants issued to myself, as CEO there is an option scheme in Blue Star Capital and it was felt, given the work I’d done over the last 2 years, that is was appropriate for me to get some warrants as well.
