Tag: Short selling

Companies House Changes – 3 Consultations, and Banning Short Selling

The Government has issued three public consultations covering these subjects:

  1. Improving the quality and value of financial information on the UK companies register.
  2. Enhancing the powers of the registrar.
  3. Implementing the ban on corporate directors.

These follow on from a previous consultation entitled “Corporate Transparency and Register Reform” which contained proposals to reduce fraud and improve transparency, and which I reported on here: https://roliscon.blog/2019/05/11/changes-proposed-at-companies-house/ and you can see my response to that consultation here: https://www.roliscon.com/Corporate-Transparency-and-Register-Reform.pdf

The latest consultations can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-consultations-to-crack-down-on-company-fraud-and-improve-corporate-transparency

These proposed changes will certainly improve the quality of information on the Companies House Register and in general should be welcomed, but they will impose more obligations on smaller companies. The consultations may be of particular interest to company directors and those who file information with Companies House such as accountants and company secretaries. But they ask a lot of questions, so perhaps best to review and respond to these consultations over Xmas. There are easy on-line questionnaires to which you can respond.  

Banning Short Selling

There was an interesting article in the Financial Times on short selling yesterday. It reported that South Korea is to attack those who bet against companies by short selling and is threatening jail and hefty fines. They are particularly concerned about “naked” short selling where stock is sold when not owned (e.g. rather than by borrowing it first), but they have also extended a ban on all short selling. Similar bans are in place in Malaysia and Indonesia.

The intention appears to be to halt speculative trading. Is it wise to do so? My view is that short selling as such can assist markets to identify a realistic price on stocks, but the problem is that it can also be associated with abusive practices where those doing so do not just keep their opinions to themselves but broadcast negative comments on a stock. Those comments can be sometimes fair and accurate but at other times they are not. It is very difficult for companies to respond to such comments and get them corrected or removed.

Of course one can argue that this sometimes happens in reverse, i.e. stocks are promoted by puffs or ramping to drive the price higher. Company directors themselves can be the source of such activity. The real issue is about media regulation where in the modern world both positive and negative commentary can be widely promoted on the internet without any regulation whatsoever.

That is the problem that needs tackling in essence, and banning short selling is at best a temporary measure that does not attack the underlying issue and in particular the excessive speculation that can take place in stock markets.  

Naked short selling might reasonably be banned though on the principle that nobody should be trading shares in which they do not have a financial interest. At least if they have a long holding, they may take the interest of the company into account. But if they have a short holding, their interest may be solely in damaging the company.

It is a long-standing principle of insurance that you cannot insure something in which you do not have an interest – for example someone else’s life unless you might suffer financial loss as a result of their death. Why? Because it is widely acknowledged it could lead to abuse, or in the case of life insurance that death might be hastened! You have to have an insurable interest to obtain insurance. That I suggest is a good principle to follow on share trading.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Burford Response and Shorting Regulation

Burford Capital (BUR) have issued a response to the allegations of false accounting from Muddy Waters. It goes into some detail and appears to at least contradict some of the allegations, if not all. It could take some weeks to analyse and verify who is correct but it leaves outstanding the basic issue of whether the accounting treatment of on-going law suits is prudent. My view is not simply because the outcome of any law suit is basically uncertain. Even if the case is won, there is no certainty that the litigants will get paid.

But there is one law suit that looks fairly certain to proceed. US lawyers Rosen Law Firm are already lining up folks to join a class action over the matter against Burford Capital Ltd. See https://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-1647.html . More background information is available here: https://tinyurl.com/yxvnc3yj .

Burford are also threatening legal action against Muddy Waters. So it looks like another lawyers’ beanfeast.

As one commentator said, those aiming to profit from shorting a stock tend to throw all kinds of mud at their target in the hope that some of it sticks. The target company is often unable to respond quickly and the issues are often so complex (as in the Burford case), that investors don’t know who to believe. So the damage is done, the share price collapses and the shorter makes an immediate handsome profit. Is this morally sound? I think not.

As I said in a previous blog post, “it is surely wrong for anyone to make such allegations and publicize them with the objective of making money from shorting the stock without first asking the company concerned to verify that what they are alleging is true – at least as far as the facts they report are concerned rather than just their opinions”. Muddy Waters did not apparently do that in this case and most shorters do not.

As someone who writes frequently on companies, it is good journalistic practice to verify with the company what you are about to publish. It is so easy to make simple factual errors or misinterpret the facts. There is nothing wrong per se in shorting as it can help to ensure that stock valuations are fair and reasonable and maintain liquidity. Most shorters do not publicise what they are doing.

Paul Scott of Stockopedia did a good analysis of the allegations and counter allegations at Burford. This is what he also said: “My feeling is that short sellers should be required to submit such a dossier to the target company, and give them say 7-days to respond privately. This would allow companies to point out the mistakes in the draft report. It does appear that the MW report might have misinterpreted some of the cases it comments on. Or at least, Burford seems to have provided reasonable explanations in most cases”. But Paul was also critical of their accounting policies and reliance on a few big cases.

I agree with him that such a regulation would be a good idea. It would stop a lot of wild and inaccurate allegations being published and at least give the target company the opportunity to issue a quick rebuttal if the allegations were still published.

The difficulty might be in framing such a regulation to cover those publishing a critique on a company at the same time as shorting the stock while excluding general market commentary and company analysis. But it would not seem impossible to do so.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Hate Crime, Fake News and Market Abuse

Yesterday saw a lot of media coverage after the Crown Prosecution Service announced that online offences of “hate crime” would in future be treated as seriously as offline offences. This is in response to the rising volume of such abuse on social media.

What is a “hate crime”? In summary, it is abuse based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity. Why just those categories? Don’t ask me – I am looking forward to abuse of baldies and fatties being made hate crimes. But this is just one aspect of the problems created by social media where anonymous posters can attack anyone whose views they do not like. Anyone in public life now regularly suffers the most vile comments from people who do not like their opinions – just ask any Member of Parliament who can tell you about it. Indeed, I have suffered from it myself.

Sometimes they do this because they know they can hide behind an anonymous google or hotmail account on the net, or by using a fictitious name. But even when it is clear who they are, there is little legal or social pressure to inhibit them. Indeed a new word has been invented to cover such behaviour – internet “troll”, which Wikipedia defines “as a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion, often for the troll’s amusement.”

In extremis this can degenerate into “harassment” which is now a criminal offence in the UK, in addition to being subject to civil claims. For example, repetition of false allegations that cause alarm or distress is harassment. Again this is so much easier to propagate on the internet and in social media. Indeed one problem is that it can be going on without the victim being aware of it because there are now so many different platforms on which it can appear that even monitoring for it is not easy.

Another very topical subject which is linked to the above is that of “fake news” which allegedly had an impact on the US Presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK. In effect, social media can be used maliciously to distribute false information with the intention of changing public opinion.

This can also be seen in financial markets where fake news can be used to affect share prices. Just create a rumour about a takeover bid on social media and the share price of a company will take off before the company can even deny it. Profits can be made from such behaviour, and even if the company denies it they may not be believed. Now simple cases like this are undoubtedly offences under the Financial Services and Markets Act but there are very few convictions for it. Social media have become impossible to police by the authorities in practice.

A Commons Select Committee was inquiring into fake news before the General Election caused the inquiry to be abandoned (along with all other business in Parliament). See https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/culture-media-and-sport-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/inquiry2/ . No report will be produced, but there was a substantial number of submissions to the inquiry. One that is particularly worth reading as it covers the abuses of financial commentators is present here: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/culture-media-and-sport-committee/fake-news/written/48219.html

For example, it says: “Short selling and market abuse – FN (Fake News) is a short sellers dream.  Before the advent of online FN short sellers had to rely on word of mouth rumour and the occasional share tipster. Today the magnification possible wields instant and widespread damage.”

Note that I see no problem with short selling so long as it is not “naked” and where the seller has a genuinely held view on the financial prospects of a company. But the ability to affect market activity by issuing slanted news commentary from the market operator is surely dubious.

Bloggers and other “financial journalists” who comment on companies are often not regulated by the FCA, can operate behind anonymous front operations or from foreign jurisdictions that are not subject to UK libel laws. In any case UK libel laws are ineffective in tackling the abuses that can be propagated as the aforementioned article explains.

Such writers and their publishers actually have a financial motive sometimes to generate the most debate by making the most outrageous claims because this will generate more hits and links to their web site. That helps to sell advertising on the site, to attract more visitors, which generates more publicity and so the circle continues.

Regrettably the law is only slowly catching up with the problems created by social media. A story put on social media can get around the world several times in a few hours, while any legal action can take months.

These problems created by “fake news”, or simply somewhat inaccurate news, might be helped if there was some way to get the news corrected. But try asking Google to remove a false story or outrageous claim. They are unlikely to do so. They even resisted strongly the EU demand to support the “right to be forgotten” about the past history of individuals (even when palpably false) and even as implemented it is of limited use.

Now the defenders of this new world argue that it is necessary to avoid regulation so as to preserve free speech. But we have surely reached the point where fuller consideration of these issues needs to be undertaken. At present, the risk of abusive attacks is likely to inhibit people getting involved in public life so free speech and democracy will be undermined rather than protected.

These are undoubtedly complex issues, difficult to cover in a short article, let alone suggest some solutions. But what do readers think, without getting into a debate on the merits of short selling?

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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