ROB ROSE: Just do your homework on short-sellers
In many boardrooms around the country, there’s an irrational fear of short-selling activists. Allan Gray says this panic is unwarranted
At Resilient’s headquarters in Rivonia Village, you’d imagine that CEO Des de Beer must be wishing a pox on anyone who even dares breathe the names of short sellers such as 36One Asset Management and Viceroy Research. In a conference call in February, De Beer said his company had been subjected to "an aggressive short-and-distort campaign", adding that "our share price has been manipulated" by the short sellers. He said the JSE should be seriously worried about the rise of "short-and-distort strategies". The clear implication, from what De Beer said, is that the analysts who’d released negative reports on Resilient — including 36One, Mergence Investment Managers, Navigare and Arqaam Capital — had purposely released incorrect information to cause a panic and profit from a fall in the share price. The evidence so far suggests it would be a stretch to ascribe that motive to the company’s critics. Without evidence that all Resilient’s critics had colluded to lie about the company, it wo...
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