Yesterday I chanced upon my neighbor, Sabre Tooth, having breakfast at McDonald's. He doesn't exactly live next door, he lives in another part of Project 4.
Anyway, he works for a real estate development firm which is financed by some of the richest people in the country. He tells me they have a substantial stake in Pacific Online, the lotto operator that recently completed its IPO.
I wrote about my misgivings about that IPO, and it turns out, I wasn't mistaken at all. Sabre Tooth says their company had to sell a huge property in Makati to finance the IPO.
Incredulously, I said, "Do you even know what you're talking about?"
"Of course I know", he defended himself.
"We sold the property so that we'll have enough funds to jack up the price of the IPO", he continued.
This is, of course, unethical practice and illegal. But it's always difficult to prove.
Price manipulation, that's what it's all about, ladies and gentlemen. I knew it, the 49% intra-day was just too spectacular. The company simply want to generate interest on the IPO by indirectly buying their own shares, ostensibly through a dummy third party, thereby pushing the prices higher. As more people get interested, they plunk money into the company and when it's high enough, the company divests while laughing its way to the bank, leaving the rest of the clueless retail investors in a lurch.
The rule of thumb is that if it's too good to be true, then be careful.
The company, which only has around 50 or so employees and renting a not-so-large office space in Ortigas, managed to raise hundreds of millions from the IPO, and they stand to gain even more once they divest their funds at a much higher price, a two-birds-in-one-stone scenario.
If you have LOTO shares, I think you had better divest now before it's too late.
Anyway, he works for a real estate development firm which is financed by some of the richest people in the country. He tells me they have a substantial stake in Pacific Online, the lotto operator that recently completed its IPO.
I wrote about my misgivings about that IPO, and it turns out, I wasn't mistaken at all. Sabre Tooth says their company had to sell a huge property in Makati to finance the IPO.
Incredulously, I said, "Do you even know what you're talking about?"
"Of course I know", he defended himself.
"We sold the property so that we'll have enough funds to jack up the price of the IPO", he continued.
This is, of course, unethical practice and illegal. But it's always difficult to prove.
Price manipulation, that's what it's all about, ladies and gentlemen. I knew it, the 49% intra-day was just too spectacular. The company simply want to generate interest on the IPO by indirectly buying their own shares, ostensibly through a dummy third party, thereby pushing the prices higher. As more people get interested, they plunk money into the company and when it's high enough, the company divests while laughing its way to the bank, leaving the rest of the clueless retail investors in a lurch.
The rule of thumb is that if it's too good to be true, then be careful.
The company, which only has around 50 or so employees and renting a not-so-large office space in Ortigas, managed to raise hundreds of millions from the IPO, and they stand to gain even more once they divest their funds at a much higher price, a two-birds-in-one-stone scenario.
If you have LOTO shares, I think you had better divest now before it's too late.
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