Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2010, before Nueva Rumasa’s collapse. In 2011 the group went into insolvency proceedings, and members of the Ruiz-Mateos family later faced fraud charges over money raised from small investors. The author says he invested in the company.
As many of you know, some time ago I wrote an article about investing in shares (participaciones sociales, the equity units of a Spanish limited company) of the new Dhul plant in Jaén, its capital increase and the Nueva Rumasa Group‘s pioneering financing system (you can read the original article here: Investing in Nueva Rumasa).
I must admit I didn’t expect that article to get so many visits, and certainly not that it would open up a line of attack against the Ruiz-Mateos family, which has ended in a series of accusations, some of them very serious, which I have no knowledge of, since I don’t do journalism or investigative work.
Even so, I defended both the company Nueva Rumasa and its founders, who are people I respect and admire, but as the rational person I am, I’ve also seen some things I haven’t liked very much.
In the comments posted recently, the accusations against Nueva Rumasa have gone as far as claiming that its current directors have convictions for fraud. This surprises me, since there is no information about it in the media and it’s simply something picked up from internet forums, but Nueva Rumasa has done nothing to deny it, or simply doesn’t feel like doing so. Whatever the reason, I don’t like it.
I got in touch with Nueva Rumasa by email, letting them know what was being said in this comment thread. I asked them either to send me the information so I could refute it with reliable data, or for one of “their people” to step in, since I sincerely believe that doing so would help them raise private capital instead of generating doubts.
That was two weeks ago, and Nueva Rumasa has said nothing, either privately or in the comments on this page, which is open to the public. Either they have nothing to deny, or they haven’t given it the importance they should.
I know this blog isn’t as popular as The Wall Street Journal, nor do I aim to be, or to do investigative work, at least for now, mainly for lack of time. What is clear is that the article gets around 135 visits a day, 95 of them new visitors (which isn’t much), but every great storm starts with a few drops.
In any case, even if only two people could see that information, it seems incredible that a company of that size doesn’t know the power and speed of the viral effect a smear campaign can produce.
All I know is that I invested part of my capital in Nueva Rumasa, and having a comment thread like that open doesn’t benefit me or any of the rest of us who decided to invest.
There could be several reasons for the lack of response:
- As I said before, there’s nothing to deny, in which case, as they’d say where I come from, I’ll have been played for a fool.
- They haven’t given it enough importance. It would be very sad and unethical for a company not even to bother thanking me for the warning, as I’m one of those people who don’t take kindly to having a message go unanswered.
- The person who received the email didn’t pass the warning on to their superiors, which would mean they have an employee with a certain degree of incompetence, putting the company’s image at risk.
Whatever the reason, a wise person admits when they were wrong, and as of today, Nueva Rumasa has let me down, so for my part I won’t speak out either for or against it again. As far as I’m concerned, the subject is closed.
Featured image: El Pantera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
