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UNDER-FIRE fund manager Blue Sky Alternative Investments is clashing with a short-seller about any contact made before they unleashed heavy criticism of Blue Sky’s model.

Blue Sky’s assertion that short-seller Glaucus Research, which makes money from share prices falling, never contacted the Brisbane company’s top brass before issuing the allegations has been rejected.

“Blue Sky ... never responded to our emails,” Glaucus’s director of research Soren Aandahl said.

Glaucus had on Wednesday launched a 67-page report detailing reasons why they thought Blue Sky was inflating asset values and manipulating investment performance.

Blue Sky told the sharemarket on Wednesday that California-based Glaucus’s criticisms were generally inaccurate. Then over the Easter period, it told investors that analysts researching for long-term investors “spend significant time with the business and with its management”.

“Conversely, research coverage by short (selling) investors is often published without this insight. Indeed, at no point has (Glaucus) attempted to have any interaction with members of Blue Sky’s board or senior management.”

Mr Aandahl said they had spent more than half a year researching Blue Sky and early in the process had contacted the Brisbane company’s investor relations department, asking questions such as how assets under management were calculated. “They ignored us,” he said.

Blue Sky stuck to its guns. “At no point did any of the three principals of Glaucus have any written or verbal correspondence with members of Blue Sky’s board or senior management team to address allegations,” a spokeswoman told The Courier-Mail.

Another Easter Blue Sky note to investors said a more detailed rebuttal of Glaucus’s claims would likely come on Tuesday.

Among target areas for Glaucus was the value and performance of Blue Sky’s assets. As The Courier-Mail revealed on Saturday, one investment, chicken-franchise Lenard’s, has just posted a worsening result of raw earnings only breaking even for fiscal 2018’s first half.

Law firms Gadens has already started sounding out investors for any action against Blue Sky, based on the short-seller research and share price drop.