A COMPANY that employs Lawrence Dallaglio, the former England rugby captain, as a director, has been sharply censured by the London Stock Exchange for keeping investors in the dark about its financial affairs.

Incite Holdings, which is quoted on the Alternative Investment Market, has failed to produce a report and accounts for the financial year to October 31, 2003, and to inform shareholders about material changes in its fortunes.

Mr Dallaglio is director in charge of business development at Incite, which provides telecoms services including text messages that keep fans up to date with the performance of football clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur.

A company spokesman said Mr Dallaglio had been involved in providing a diary of last year’s Rugby World Cup for mobile phone users, but was not a main board director.

The Stock Exchange, in what it said was only the second such censure of an AIM-listed company, criticised Incite for failing to provide the latest accounts. The shares, listed on AIM a year ago, were suspended for this reason in January. The company is already under a cloud after the results of an earlier Stock Exchange inquiry were passed on to the Financial Services Authority, the financial regulator. This had to do with the non-disclosure of the sale of an 8 per cent stake in the firm by Richard Griffiths, chairman of the Evolution Group, whose subsidiary, Christows, was the company broker.

The FSA refused to comment on the matter. Evolution said Mr Griffiths’ investment had been disclosed to the company “at the appropriate time”. It added: “Mr Griffiths’ role as Evolution’s chairman was irrelevant to his personal investment in Incite.”

A spokesman for Incite said of the LSE censure: “This is the end of any investigation. From the Exchange’s point of view the company has a clean slate going forward.”

Incite has just raised another £460,000 of fresh funds from Bruce Pleckinger, an existing investor. But, after the breakdown of the relationship with Evolution, it must find another nominated adviser and publish the delayed report and accounts before dealings in its shares can resume.

As well as Incite’s failure to publish accounts, in the period up to the suspension of its shares, it failed to announce a lack of revenue and a lack of working capital that, if it had been disclosed, would have amounted to a change in its financial position, which would have affected the share price.

There is no fine linked to the censure and it does not affect the directors’ ability to run the company. Martin Graham, head of AIM at the LSE, said: “A public censure is one of the strongest actions we can take against a company.”