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Article: Asanko fires back after allegations from K2 Investment

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Asanko fires back after allegations from K2 Investment

MATTHEW KEEVIL, 20 July 2016

Asanko Gold (TSX: AKG; NYSE-MKT: AKG) has reported its inaugural production quarter at its Asanko gold mine in Ghana, but it is also busy countering criticism about its technical reporting from Toronto-based hedge fund K2 & Associates Investment Management. Asanko hit commercial production at its namesake operation in early April after completing the US$295-million development ahead of schedule. Asanko’s first phase of mining will focus on the Obotan project, which includes the Nkran pit and four satellite deposits.

This first phase of production is expected to total 2.34 million oz. over a 12.4-year mine life based on reserves of 2.5 million oz. gold hosted within 36.7 million tonnes grading 2.15 grams gold per tonne. Asanko is scheduled to produce 190,000 oz. gold annually.
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Article: Asanko Gold’s (TSE:AKG) Q2 Results Will Be One to Watch

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Asanko Gold’s (TSE:AKG) Q2 Results Will Be One to Watch

SmallCapPower, 19 July 2016

Asanko Gold Inc. (TSE:AKG) is a gold junior that seemed to have been doing everything right. Yet, a Toronto-based hedge fund recently questioned the calculation of the Ghana gold miner’s resource. Asanko has yet to issue any news in response to these claims, so the release of its second-quarter production and conference call on Wednesday, July 20, 2016, should be an event of great interest to its shareholders.

On June 29, 2016, the Financial Post reported that K2 & Associates Investment Management alleged that Asanko’s gold resources “don’t add up” and appear to be over-inflated by a factor of two. It must be noted that K2 has a short position in Asanko and, thus, has much to gain if the Company’s stock price were to fall.
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Article: Short seller Cohodes targets yet another Canadian firm: Exchange Income

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Short seller Cohodes targets yet another Canadian firm: Exchange Income

Jennifer Ablan, 05 July 2016

Short seller Marc Cohodes, who has famously bet against the shares of six Canadian-based companies including Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc and Home Capital Group Inc, said on Wednesday that he is targeting yet another Canadian firm – Exchange Income Corp.

Cohodes told Reuters that Exchange Income – a Winnipeg-based company focused on opportunities in aerospace and aviation services and equipment, and manufacturing – does not generate enough cash to pay the juicy dividend it provides investors. At about C$33 per share, Exchange Income commands a market capitalization of $1 billion.

Cohodes, who worked at a short-selling hedge fund but now raises chickens in California and invests his own money, has targeted Valeant, Intertain Group Ltd, Concordia International Corp, Home Capital, Equitable Group Inc and Badger Daylighting Ltd. Cohodes told Reuters last month that he is keeping his short position on the Canadian lender Home Capital despite a capital infusion from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc .

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Article: Israeli Businessman Nochi Dankner Found Guilty of Stock Manipulation

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Israeli Businessman Nochi Dankner Found Guilty of Stock Manipulation

Jasmin Gueta, 04 July 2016

Nochi Dankner, who was for a decade one of the most powerful business tycoons in Israel, was found guilty on Monday of stock manipulation and other securities-related offenses.

Broke tycoon ejected from Tel Aviv restaurant. In first testimony, Dankner denies role in alleged share manipulation. Nochi Dankner survives South America helicopter crash. The maximum punishment for the offenses is five years’ imprisonment.

In a 280-page decision, Judge Khaled Kabub of the Tel Aviv District Court found Dankner guilty of all the charges that had been brought against him, which centered on his manipulating the share price of his publicly traded IDB Holding Corporation ahead of a secondary offering of its shares in February 2012. Dankner consistently denied any wrongdoing. Continue reading “Article: Israeli Businessman Nochi Dankner Found Guilty of Stock Manipulation”

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Article: Hedge fund claims 90% downside potential at Asanko Gold

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Hedge fund claims 90% downside potential at Asanko Gold

Peter Koven, 29 June 2016

Gold miner Asanko Gold Inc. has come under attack from a Toronto-based hedge fund that claims its stock price could plunge 90 per cent. The main allegation from K2 & Associates Investment Management Inc. is that Asanko’s gold resources “don’t add up” and appear to be over-inflated by a factor of two. K2 has a short position in Asanko, and in the grand tradition of short sellers, the hedge fund published its report on the company on a public website, allowing anyone to download it.

The strategy is reminiscent of previous short-seller attacks on Chinese-Canadian firms Sino-Forest Corp. and Silvercorp Metals Inc., which were highly effective in driving down the stock prices of the targets. However, this short report only had a minor impact. Asanko shares dropped five per cent on Wednesday, closing at $5.17 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

“We thought it was important for our work and opinions to be entered into the public conversation,” K2 founder Shawn Kimel said in an emailed response to questions. He noted at least nine other groups are publishing opinions on Asanko and that it is the largest short position in K2’s precious metals portfolio.
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Filing: SEC v Merrill Lynch

Filing

SEC v Merrill Lynch

23 June 2016

Broker-dealers are required to be diligent stewards of the cash and securities entrusted to them by their customers. This basic principle is embodied in Exchange Act Rule 15c3-3, known as the Customer Protection Rule (“Rule”). The Rule requires broker-dealers to safeguard both the cash and securities of their customers so that customer assets can be quickly returned if the firm fails. In broad strokes, a broker-dealer cannot use customer assets to finance the business activities of the firm, and it cannot place customer assets in locations or accounts that make them vulnerable to claims made against the broker-dealer by third parties.

PDF (23 pages): SEC v Merrill Lynch

 

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Article: Credit Suisse Tries to Overhaul Its Image, but Problems Remain

Article - Media

Credit Suisse Tries to Overhaul Its Image, but Problems Remain

William D. Cohan

New York Times, 23 June 2016

Wall Street’s efforts to overhaul its culture since the 2008 financial crisis that nearly bankrupted the world’s economy have not been a resounding success, despite calls by prominent regulators to stop rewarding bad behavior.

William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and one of Wall Street’s most important overseers, has twice held closed-door sessions at the bank, located in downtown Manhattan, to urge top banking executives to overhaul the behavior inside their companies. His goal has been to get bankers to think about what they should do instead of what they can do and get away with.

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Article: FINRA Fines Morgan Stanley $80,000 for Supervisory Failures, Deletion of 21k OTC Options Positions

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FINRA Fines Morgan Stanley $80,000 for Supervisory Failures, Deletion of 21k OTC Options Positions

Michael Edmiston

Stock Law, 13 June 2016

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC received a censure and $80,000 fine after a FINRA investigation determined the firm improperly deleted 21,374 over-the-counter (OTC) options positions required to be reported to the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC)’s LOPR system, thereby rendering the LOPR data inaccurate.

FINRA wrote that, “The accuracy of LOPR data is essential for the analysis of various potential violations, including insider trading, position limits, exercise limits, front-running, capping and pegging, mini-manipulation, and marking-the-close.” The identification process assists regulators in identifying potential market manipulation by users who hold large options positions, such that deleting such information may adversely affect the industry’s ability to detect such violations.

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Article: SESC Proposes $1.9m Fine for Morgan Stanley MUFG over Market Manipulation

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SESC Proposes $1.9m Fine for Morgan Stanley MUFG over Market Manipulation

Finance Magnates, 12 June 2016

Japan’s financial market watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC), today recommended fining Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities for alleged market manipulation related to shares of railway operator, Seibu Holdings, according to a Reuters report.

SESC has recommended that the Financial Services Agency (FSA) imposes a penalty of ¥220 million ($1.9 million), as revealed in a statement posted on its website.

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Article: How Steven Cohen Built, and Almost Lost, His $12.7 Billion Net Worth

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How Steven Cohen Built, and Almost Lost, His $12.7 Billion Net Worth

Kay Jenkins, 11 June 2016

Steven A Cohen has a net worth of $12.7 billion, a figure that grew from a relatively small $25 million seed investment into his hedge fund, SAC Capital, in 1992. The firm was wildly successful in the 1990s and 2000s, minting billions for Cohen and his investors until an SEC investigation into insider trading effectively shuttered the firm in 2012.

Cohen may have fallen from grace, but that doesn’t mean he’s out of the game forever. In fact, some think he just may be getting started. Continue reading “Article: How Steven Cohen Built, and Almost Lost, His $12.7 Billion Net Worth”

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Article: Ban offshore banks with account secrecy from US correspondent accounts: Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz

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Ban offshore banks with account secrecy from US correspondent accounts: Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz

Lucy Komisar

The Komisar Scoop, 3 June 2016

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning former chief economist of the World Bank, says that the way to solve corruption and money-laundering facilitated by offshore banks that run secret accounts is to “shut them down.” And the way to do that is to ban non-transparent banks from US correspondent accounts. He spoke at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting today.

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Article: Immunomedics Kicked Out of Prestigious ASCO Cancer Conference

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Immunomedics Kicked Out of Prestigious ASCO Cancer Conference

Adam Feuerstein

TheStreet, 3 June 2016

Immunomedics (IMMU) – Get Report was caught trying to sneak old, previously presented clinical data on its triple-negative breast cancer drug IMMU-132 into the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, which starts Friday.

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Comment: Complete fraud.  Stock went from $5.50 to $2.50 on millions of shares, then up to $27.

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Article: Russian Police Bust Alleged Bank Malware Gang

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Russian Police Bust Alleged Bank Malware Gang

Mathew J. Schwartz, 02 June 2016

Russian authorities have arrested about 50 people in connection with an ongoing investigation into a hacker group that’s suspected of unleashing malware-enabled hack attacks against customers of major Russian financial institutions. Continue reading “Article: Russian Police Bust Alleged Bank Malware Gang”

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Article: The Deutsche Bank gold manipulation scandal

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The Deutsche Bank gold manipulation scandal

Leonard Melmano, 02 June 2016

Sophisticated British criminals exploited vulnerabilities in Australia’s search engine and cryptocurrency infrastructure to dupe small investors, lured by the promise of high-yield funds badged by some of the finance world’s most trusted brands.

The complex scheme involved stolen identities and fraudulent prospectuses that claimed to represent high-yield investment funds run by global managers Citibank, Nomura, and IFM Investors. It has ensnared millions from unsuspecting victims who sought better returns as interest rates collapsed during the COVID-19 crisis. Continue reading “Article: The Deutsche Bank gold manipulation scandal”

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Article: Flash Crashes, Algo Manipulation & Demystifying Market Abuse Regulation

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Flash Crashes, Algo Manipulation & Demystifying Market Abuse Regulation

Roger Aitken, 26 May 2016

It’s conjecture as to when the next flash crash might occur. But with the EU Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) coming into force on 3 July 2016, investment firms and operators of trading venues are heading for yet another regulatory change. As if there were not enough regulations and red tape confronting firms from a slew of edicts from Brussels and elsewhere in other jurisdictions.

One could reel off regulatory acronyms such as MiFIR, REMIT to counter market abuse in the energy markets and MAD to name a few. This time though it is with a focus of manipulation of algorithms being labelled as ‘market abuse’.

Driving the latest regulation on top of the welter of others is a need to establish a more uniform and stronger framework in order to preserve market integrity, to avoid potential regulatory arbitrage as well as to ensure accountability in the event of attempted manipulation. Add in providing more legal certainty and – in the view of the legislators – less regulatory complexity for market participants and compliance officers have their hands full. Continue reading “Article: Flash Crashes, Algo Manipulation & Demystifying Market Abuse Regulation”