As I understand... Blackrock Inc. & JP Morgan have entered into...

As I understand...

Blackrock Inc. & JP Morgan have entered into a borrowing/lending agreement.

Blackrock -Lender
JP Morgan- Borrower.

JP Morgan have borrowed 34.8 million shares from Blackrock.

After the ex-dividend day(4th of Sept 19)......JP Morgan have short sold nearly 29.5 Million shares.
They still have 5 million shares on hand to play with. They will need to buy back the circa 30 million shares under 3 dollars to make some profit. The stock is mostly held by institutional investors & fund managers.
They are relying on the retail investors to sell. If the retail don't panic and sell, it will be hard to buy back 30 million shares. Unless someone is really in need of the money...there is little reason to sell SBM shares. SBM is priced well below its peers like SAR, RRL & RSG and far far below superior peers like EVN & NST.

The gold price is still extremely attractive in both USD and AUD terms for the cost structure of SBM.

So JP Morgan is betting on either more fall in the price of gold or some company specific short term bad news. They could also have used the recent weakness in gold price to take a position in SBM by borrowing/shorting and buying. Just like Societe Generale did. It appears these large institution are in cahoot and take their turns so they don't interfere in each others activities. Norges Bank, Societe Generale, JP Morgan etc etc. Blackrock also wants to generate income in fees from its holding.
Only if the retail didn't panic & sell at a loss, they would never win this game.

This is the game we are involved in.