A Zombie firm is one that is as good as dead but for some reason it is still 'alive' but flailing.

Examples:

Kenya Airways: Negative Equity, begging for loans everywhere, looking for bailouts and Scams Inc is in charge.

Uchumi: A major shareholder says it was conned. Stores closing, suppliers not supplying goods, customers avoiding the stores and there was Scam Inc in charge.
http://www.businessdaily...-/15d0iooz/-/index.html

NBK: It cannot grow, Scam Inc remains in charge, poor loan quality, etc.

Others include:

ADSS, Eveready, Sameer.

Sameer: Merali. 'Nuff said. Even the Chinese don't want to deal with him! http://www.businessdaily.../-/12khyle/-/index.html

Uchumi story is quite something.
“As a listed company, we got the transaction approved by all regulators but the information memorandum was a work of fiction, it did not reflect what we found there,” said Mr Kimani yesterday at the bank’s annual general meeting.

“We feel cheated because unlike a private company where you do due diligence, a listed company you depend on the information memorandum provided.”

That captures our problems as investors perfectly. Hopefully, now that he chairs the NSE board, he can help drive listed company disclosures and protect us.

I would imagine that it's in the interest of everyone in the long term, especially of large shareholders of listed companies, to have investors believe in the integrity of the capital markets.

Short term thinking, non-shareholder CEOs pursuing selfish goals to the long term detriment of the entire market should worry Britam and Equity shareholders more than anyone. No?

So the information memorandum meant for the public, allowed by the regulator, is found to be fraudulent, and we blame the victims?

Both!!!

You are a Wazuan. You've seen how they dig for information before putting their money anywhere. And we are talking about people with far much less resources than Jamii Bora and investing much much less.

The regulator should ensure that all the information is factual. Do they ever??? The investor should do due diligence before putting money anywhere. Wazuans do. Other Kenyans do. Why would Jamii Bora simply read a document on the way to become the main shareholder??? Stupid!!!

We even interrogate published results here. You don't have to be a genius to know there a is a lot of "creative accounting" and misinformation in the business world!!!