Proxy Battle Exposing Ugly Truth — Live Current
Firm has murky past.
The battle over Live Current Media’s board is heating up, and with each war of words more of the firm’s questionable past comes out into the open.
In Live Current’s Preliminary Proxy Statement for its upcoming meeting, current CEO Geoffrey Hampson stated he began to have a falling out with the Jeffs family following Hampson didn’t have Live Current buy the web site Makeup.com.
Confused? Take a look at the players.
David Jeffs – former President of Live Current
Richard Jeffs – David’s father
Geoffrey Hampson – current CEO and Chairman of Board
As stated by the proxy statement, Richard Jeffs wanted Live Current to purchase Makeup.com, a firm that Richard Jeffs stated he controlled. Live Current reviewed the idea but ultimately passed. The relationship between Hampson and Jeffs deteriorated from there, at least as stated by the statement.
Have you heard of Makeup.com ahead of? There are two reasons. First, L’Oreal bought it for seven figures earlier this year.
Second, and more importantly, Live Current used to own Makeup.com back when Live Current was called Communicate.com. Communicate.com sold the domain name to Manhattan Assets Corp along with Automobile.com, Exercise.com, and Call.com. But you know what? Richard Jeffs served as a director at Manhattan Assets Corp.
Come again? Basically members of the Jeffs family purchased Automobile.com, Exercise.com, Call.com and Makeup.com from Communicate.com. Then they “sold” Call.com back to Communicate.com in order to eliminate an ongoing royalty payment provision while Richard’s son was still President of the firm. Later, Richard allegedly asked Live Current to also buy Makeup.com back. [Update: I am told that Richard Jeffs was not a director at Manhattan when the original deal was done; he was a director when the sell back of Call.com occurred].
Richard Jeffs was also a party to a settlement with the British Columbia Securities Commission (the “BCSCâ€) in April 2007. It turns out the Jeffs family is tied to what The Vancouver Sun called a boiler room.
One of the stocks it pushed was Communicate.com.
