Five days ago Chris Moat said that he was delighted to be joining Fairpoint, “the market leader in IVAs”, as chief executive. Yesterday, he was a bit more downbeat, saying that he had joined the biggest player in a personal debt management market that was falling 22 per cent year on year and scrapping the dividend, as the shares slumped 53p to 31p.

The high street banks are starting to restrict the number of individual voluntary arrangements that they allow and the size of the fees that they will are willing to pay Fairpoint.

Mr Moat said that the group’s debt, which reached £5.6 million in December, will snowball to £11.2 million by the end of this month. Underlying earnings for the whole year will be £4.3 million, which is a third of that forecast by Numis, the house broker.

Royal Bank of Scotland is - so far - keeping open the company’s £16 million overdraft facility. Fairpoint is promising that cashflow will turn positive in the second half of the year and is pinning its hopes on a move next month into providing debt management plans, which creditor banks prefer to IVAs. But fees and margins for Fairpoint are likely to be lower.

Peter Hambro Mining, the Russian goldminer that is due to move from AIM to the main list this year, slipped 4p to £12.95 after making its first investment outside the country, a $20 million (£10 million) convertible loan to Rusoro, its Venezuelan peer.

GCM Resources, the former Asia Energy, rose another 42p to 229½p amid talk that the Bangladeshi Government would allow its giant Phul-bari coalmine project to go ahead in return for a bigger cut of the profits.

Betbrokers, the sports betting brokerage, fell 0.175p to 0.475p as it said that a lack of funds meant clients had to be turned away.

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