Hier noch ein Artikel über die Vorgehensweise von Yorkville;
KNOW the feeling? That old diluted feeling? Those shares that once
held such promise now languish at a fraction of a cent. They're
worth even less than the amount of tax Google Australia pays in
Australia. That's low.
What do you do? Why sell them when they're worth less than the
brokerage? Why not slip them in the bottom drawer?
One day, suddenly, there is a glimmer of hope. A letter arrives.
Your exploration company has been transformed. Like the butterfly
rising resplendently from the ashes, your company is on the cusp of
finding a cure for cancer. Alas, there has been a
restructuring.
The shares which were worth a fraction of a cent are now fetching a
fraction of a fraction of a cent.
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Even if they did achieve that cure for cancer, after just one more
equity raising, your share would not even be enough to chip in with
your mates - who, by the way, are definitely not mates with any
good old Labor ministers - to buy that stretch of dirt that is just
about to become a coalmine in New South Wales.
Shareholders in Compass Resources know that feeling. One day they
owned a billion-dollar enterprise touting the fourth-largest lead
project in the world. The next, they found themselves diluted to 5
per cent of the stock.
Even more galling was the fact that their chairman, Gordon Toll,
and a US hedge fund emerged with the other 90 per cent or so - a
good old debt-for-equity swap, you see. Gordon and the hedge fund,
Yorkville Advisors, had helpfully provided some loans to Compass
before its grisly demise.
Those loans would become equity thanks to a deal with Ferrier
Hodgson, appointed administrators in January 2009.
Now, Yorkville and its founder, Mark Angelo, have been charged with
fraud by the US Securities and Exchanges Commission.
As an aside, Yorkville is also financier to the likes of
Drillsearch, Greenland Minerals, Nexus, Cougar Energy, Peninsular
Mining, Aurox Resources, St Barbara, European Gas, Toro Energy,
Lynas, Arafura Resources, Admiralty Resources, Linc Energy,
Unwired, Industrea, Murchison Metals, Queensland Gas Company and
Fortescue Metals.
So shareholders in the above might care to check the status of
their credit arrangements with Yorkville, or YA Global as it is
known.
YA practices a pernicious form of lending called ''death spiral
financing'', where it is issued with shares in the company with
which it has struck its funding deal - usually a company desperate
for cash.
YA can therefore ''short'' the stock in the knowledge that it won't
have to buy back the shares on-market to cover its position.
Shareholders in Compass Resources, who are still clamouring for
justice, could be forgiven for suspecting that YA cleaned up by
shorting shares in their company before it became a secured
creditor and emerged from administration with the bulk of the
stock.
A neologism is in order. We hereby coin the word:
shareholdercide.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/shareholdercide--diluted-to-d…