kassa! schreef op 9 december 2024 09:37:
Black Friday at Atos, a scandal in the treatment of shareholders
News published on 06/12/24 22:53
What happened in the controversial Atos case this Friday, December 6?
While the IT group in turmoil has just completed the first stage of its financial restructuring with a capital increase of 233 million euros, a strange market phenomenon took place this Friday.
The new shares (around 63 billion) will be delivered to investors on December 10 and admitted to trading on Euronext the same day. This is what was communicated to investors during the capital increase. But here we are, 3 trading days before, the title collapses (-98.54%) in stratospheric volumes of more than 6 billion shares traded!
The problem is that until today the capital of Atos is made up of approximately 112 million shares. Information that we display on ABC Bourse but which is also confirmed by Euronext as shown in this screenshot of their website:
Euronext Atos
This is completely logical information since the new titles are not being delivered.
The problem is that as soon as the (logically delayed) opening of the Atos listing today we saw an order book with several billion shares for sale. Some lines were for 500 million. How is this possible?
At the ABC Bourse editorial office, we have been following the markets for almost 25 years now and we have seen capital increases, but never this. When they are intended to save a company and not to generate growth, there is always a sharp decline. Our analysis of Atos on December 5 , the day before this huge fall, warned readers. Atos itself had warned that we should expect a huge dilution. All this is quite logical, but the problem is that it happens well before the delivery of the shares.
We could talk about short sellers, but that doesn't hold up either. To sell securities short you have to borrow them and given the volumes we always have the same problem, it's impossible.
We could also say that the volume is the result of numerous back-and-forth movements of trading robots, but there again that does not fit with lines of millions of titles that are theoretically non-existent.
So where do these billions of shares come from?
This is the question that remains unanswered today. In any case, they do not come from individual investors who only had their eyes to cry with today, we end at €0.0026/share when they were paid €0.0037, which is already a 30% loss in value.
They do not come from Philippe Salle, chairman of the board of directors and future general director of the company, who subscribed for 9 million euros and who has a holding commitment.
What is certain is that some participants in the recapitalization had the shares in advance and were able to dispose of them before the general public. In this case, we can already consider that there was unequal treatment between shareholders and that once again individuals are the turkeys of the farce.
This is probably one more scandal to pin on this cursed file. It will be interesting to have the explanations of the company but also and especially of the market operator, Euronext and the AMF which is supposed to protect savings and ensure that there is equal treatment.
We have sent a request for information to the AMF and will complete this file if we receive a response from them.
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