motive for driving down ndo share price, page-26

Hi Chelkn,

"In my limited experience I've never seen a potential buyer trying to push the share price down for a takeover. That practice is highly illegal and although we think that the ASX is a toothless tiger it would only take 5 minites of investigating by the ASX to reveal what the potential buyer was up to. ASIC alone could unravel it quick smart."

Let me clear this notion up for you with first hand experience.

Some years ago now, I was heavily into a stock called Kimberly Diamonds (KIM). The AUD started appreciating on a regular basis, and was around the mid 80 US cents at the time.
Suddenly, the KIM sp took a dip from around 87c to the low 70's.

It stayed at this level for around 2.5 mths, averaging around 73 or 74c for the period.
There were some very good ann's during this period...resource upgrades of 40 odd %, good diamond sales, and the coy turned cashflow + according to a qtly. But all heavy buying after the ann's was met with equal fervour selling, and the sp went nowhere.

Then in 4 or 5 days, the sp took a nosedive to 45c under a barrage of heavy selling. The next day it traded, closed at 52.5c, and promptly went into a trading halt.

The next ann was that the coy had received a take over offer at a very generous offer price of 70c/share, some 33% above the last closing price.
KIM mgmt advised all s/holders to accept the generous offer, as they said the KIM business had been costed to a profitable business with the AUD at a maximum of 64c to the USD...stunning news, which I had never come across in any coy literature.

The coy making the offer was from the UK. It turned out that an Aust insto who was a KIM holder, and who had been involved in the heavy sell down to 45c, had the same insto name as the broker who was representing the buyer...an Aust arm and a UK arm...I'm sure you know how it goes, they're all over the world.

Despite the protestations of numerous s/holders to whatever agency we thought could help us get some justice, the t/over went through without any hinderance or investigation (as far as I know), despite the authorities vowing to look into it.

That little episode cost me $47.5K in one hit, so you can see why I might've had a little thought of "he's got no idea" when reading your post.

One very sad aspect of what happened at KIM was that, after a meeting with KIM mgmt and the buyer, and agreement reached, one of the founding members of KIM went back to his office and put a bullet through his brain...RIP Graeme.

I'm sure if you hang around the mkt long enough you'll have your eyes opened.

This post is not intended to infer that NDO may be under any takeover threat...I'm sure it's not!

The mkt is not a level playing field, despite what we little retail investors/traders would like to think!

The above is one of the reasons why hearing all the whining re manipulation, sp closing down half a cent by one share etc etc, is pretty much laughable.

The sector will move when it's ready to move...IMO.