opes prime, page-10

Gday Andy,

I agree - reckon this is a disgrace and imho, believe ANZ should wear the loss - not individual shareholders.

I believe most shareholders have not had margin calls and some have even not borrowed at all against their margin loan (simply had a facility in place but did not use funds from the margin loan) and because deep down in the loan paperwork somewhere, they had signed ownership over to OP and by buying the shares via OP as a broker, they automatically became beneficial interest holders (as opposed to owners of the shares) which then allows ANZ to take ownership when OP went belly up.

I work in banking and believe that unless the customers of OP signed a specific acknowledgement that this arrangement exists (given it is so far out of the ordinary), then it might be in breach of the Trade Practices Act under the unconscionable conduct provision (I'm no lawyer though - jmho).

A caller on ABC talk back radio yesterday indicated ANZ appeared to be uncertain if this was legal but might be taking a 'see you in court' attitude. In todays paper, some OP customers have lodged an injunction with Federal Court (with Justice Finkelstein who also suspended CEO Emini's passport) to stop ANZ selling any shares until this can all be sorted.

A disgraceful mess which imho has the possibility of ripping of the small man through what I see as a corporate con.

Impact for long MHL holders though should not be too bad - no material problems with company - simply a broker going belly up - may lead to some buying opportunities imho.

Also not sure what the impact of short selling is. My understanding is that this is where people sell shares before buying them. Can drive down the share price but the same number of shares have to be repurchased. Does anyone know if this has a particular involvement with OP issues and/or MHL. Just trying to gauge if their is a chance of a large parcel of MHL shrea that might need to be purchased as a result of short selling. Clearly I do not know much about this side of the story.