Mystery of DIFC ticker blackout solved

Lumidiem, the company that showed stock prices, is out of business.

AD201010706279919AR

The giant electronic ticker outside the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) that displayed the share prices of local companies has been switched off for months. Now investors know why. The DIFC-registered company that installed and operated it is being wound up, documents obtained by The National show. The LED screen that once delivered reassuring messages to investors at the height of the financial crisis has been dark since March, when it was switched off.

The DIFC said yesterday that it was "reviewing its content management contracts and revisiting its marketing plans", after Lumidiem, the company that provided the display, went out of business. "The ticker will be turned back on," a DIFC spokeswoman said. She did not say when. Lumidiem is one of dozens of companies based at the financial free zone that have been forced out of business as a result of the global financial crisis. The ticker displayed share prices for companies listed on NASDAQ Dubai.

Lumidiem was planning at one point to build a 104-metre-long curved screen and a 16-metre diameter LED sphere for the DIFC, but those plans were scrapped. Lumidiem, the corporate slogan of which was "enlightening the world", was an up-and-coming company in the high-tech signs and lighting industry that hoped to see revenue of US$109 million (Dh400.3m) and issue stock to the public within three years, according to an "information memorandum" about Lumidiem prepared by Chescor Capital, an adviser to the company.

Lumidiem planned to acquire Kindwin, a Chinese screen and lighting maker, and TechMedia, an Australian provider of content for LED screens, to prepare for a big entry into an industry with $2.6 billion in annual sales, the memorandum said. In the middle of last year, the company went on a hiring spree, bringing to the UAE executives from corporations including Johnson & Johnson and Hewlett-Packard.

"It was a fascinating company," said Charles Willson, an executive recruiter who helped hire some of the staff at Lumidiem. "They had all these ideas. They wanted to prepare for a global roll-out." But within months of hiring the executives, the company's founder, Christopher Williams, announced it could no longer meet payroll and was laying off many of its employees, including some who had arrived only weeks earlier, according to former employees and Mr Willson.

It is understood the company ran into trouble when several of its clients defaulted on their debts. "It turned out that they didn't have the funds to turn their ideas into reality," Mr Willson said. "Who knows? Maybe if the orders they had came through, they could have made it. What was obvious was that they didn't have the experience or the money to expand into a larger company." Mr Williams could not be reached for comment. Wadi Ahmed, the former chief executive of Lumidiem and a former director of marketing for the DIFC, declined to comment.

The laid-off employees filed claims against Lumidiem in the Small Claims Tribunal within the DIFC Courts, where proceedings are confidential and cases often resolved through mediation. Several of the employees won their claims, but Lumidiem did not comply with the tribunal's orders, leading a judge to issue an order on February 7 to seize the assets of the company at its offices on the 19th floor of the BurJuman centre tower.

An order on March 18 revealed comments from the provisional liquidator of the company that the "directors of Lumidiem Limited have left the country". The stock ticker outside the DIFC went dark soon after. The website of the DIFC Register of Companies now lists Lumidiem as "inactive, non-operational". @Email:[e-mail]