And if the Finance falls through….we just open the TAFTA...

And if the Finance falls through….we just open the TAFTA envelope. RSK doesn’t come this far to fall at the last hurdle. He will have a back up, with the TAFTA award as a last resort.

Separately, that large trade last Friday of around 500+K shares right on the close got me thinking. I think it was placed with a limit of 1.435, so it can’t have been a legitimate trade as it was completely filled. An ordinary buy would have been partially filled (with however many shares were on offer up to $1.435) with the remainder (480-500k shares) unfilled. This wasn’t the case which shows that it was orchestrated by the broker(s).

I asked a friend who is an equities dealer and has far more expertise than me in this area and he agreed, saying “check who the brokers are once the trade settles T+3 on Bloomberg or Iress”… I asked why anyone would orchestrate a trade like this right on the close, and his answer was that normally you would do a crossed trade for a transfer of shares of this magnitude, but for whatever reason a crossed trade wasn’t done, possibly due to timing.

Putting it through right on the close allows the trade to go through on the open market without having to complete with other participants for the shares as people haven’t got time to react. In essence whoever did this wanted this trade to look like an arm’s length transaction between unrelated entities when clearly this isn’t the case. It also makes perfect sense with the ongoing market manipulation and BAML not announcing to the market that they have passed 5% since February.
My guess is that a number of related entities with common beneficial owners will get to just under 5%, perform a series of off market transfers, and hey presto! 20% and an announcement of a low-ball takeover offer. It’s purely speculation by me, but if it does happen, I will direct my contact at ASIC’s attention to this trade, as I know they are watching KCN’s trading. Whether they spring into action in the next month or in 2023, I don’t know. But they are watching. Someone else deserves the credit here though.

I might also pay very close attention to the market depth at the close in case whoever did this transfer (as that’s what it is) tries it again. It would be extremely satisfying to swipe a large number of shares from the predators, placing a corresponding buy trade a half cent higher than theirs. I wouldn’t want to be the broker explaining to the client that instead of processing a transfer as intended, only the sale leg was executed and they lost all the shares.