Time for a class action, page-16

@Savyinvestor
@longgame101

What you personally think of shareholder class actions is, with respect, not really relevant to the question of whether VOC might potentially be the subject of a shareholder class action. The issue VOC has is that it has missed guidance issued only a few months ago by a long way, and part of that miss has to do with accounting treatment changes, which is always a bad start. Whether they intended to mislead the market, or whether they simply made some egregious but innocent disclosure errors, is also of not much relevance.

In practice, what happens in situations like this is that a plaintiff law firm (Slaters, Maurice Blackburn etc.) will soon ring around all VOC's institutional shareholders, basically asking "hey guys, looks like you took a bath on VOC, did you rely on their profit guidance issued in the 1HFY17 report to hold or buy your VOC shares?", and if the institutional shareholder says: "yeah, we relied on that guidance in holding or buying VOC, we'd be interested in being part of a shareholder class action", then the plaintiff law firm all of a sudden has a major institutional shareholder to cornerstone a class action. At that point, the plaintiff law firm contacts a litigation funder (like IMF), and off they go. So, whether you personally think there'll be a class action isn't really relevant - VOC's institutional shareholders will ultimately decide that for you, and it normally only takes one disgruntled institutional shareholder to make a class action financially viable for plaintiff law firms and litigation funders.