Picsel administrators sell assets to former managers

The Picsel nonsense from the owners fools nobody

Everyone knows the true story here is that all the people remaining are screwed. The people back in charge are the ones responsible for running it into the ground in the first place.

I feel bad for the remaining few. The only good thing to come out of this whole sorry affair in the end is that the owners will lose everything. They deserve to.

Here's the way I see it:

1) Owners get back in charge

2) Owners release an update to the press which makes them sound good.

3) Owners either don't pay people, fire people, make more redundancies or fail in some other way.

4) Owners stay silent.

Watch this space. If none of those things happen, I will eat my hat.

Classic Tactics

Isn't this just like the stuff you'd see on Watchdog where some dodgy people fold their company and then magically re-appear doing business again? Mix it in with patent trolling - since they're probably not going to be developing a great deal of stuff - and short of a hedge fund manager having money stuffed into his trousers, that's most of the stuff that's wrong with "British business".

Cue Sir Digby Horsecock-Poleslider III of the CBI to justify the "British innovatorial spirit" while getting hand-outs (hand-somethings, anyway) from a government minister.

No business plan + No Products to sell = FAIL

Hamsard has been changed to Picsel Holdings Limited (Guernsey). A source at the company tells me that there is no business plan and no product to sell, plus they are making 50 staff (out of 60) redundant. Some rescue plan.

Certainly the reading at http://expicsel.ning.com makes for some interesting reading. I feel for the staff at Picsel.

Redundancies on cards

The 'new management' has already started the redundancy process. Around half of the remaining UK employees are to be paid off and consultation has started. So much for safegarding jobs.

Anyone with get up and go has got up and gone

It's incomprehensible why the Mystery Investor (let's be honest, Samsung) would loan Imran money to keep Picsel running as a going concern. Since they were the only bidder, they could have had the patents and the source for a fraction of that, then toss the source into their battery chicken dev farm and see what gets crapped out the other end.

The only arrangement that even seems plausible is that Picsel effectively become a subsidiary of Samsung, and gets to do other business on the side if and only if it doesn't effect support for Samsung, under threat of having the plug pulled (again) if they're not happy. That's not really different from the de facto arrangement since 2007 or so, just with far fewer Picsel staff for Imran and Majid to throw into playing catchup with iPhone, fantasy services and content schemes and video delivery.

Since that's apparently still the "plan", perhaps Picsel's new motto could be "Yesterday's Solutions, Tomorrow"