"...the conduct must have been 'likely' to mislead or deceive"
altough its correct that the intention doesnt need to be their, it certainly makes it easier to prove/more obvious.
in your case you need to prove that you personally were mislead by the statement and why. the courts then need to decide if a reasonable person(ie not a lawyer or accountant) would be mislead by the statement.
IF they determine the statement to be misleading, they still need to know how much it contributed to your decision to buy/sell and compensate accordingly.
an example would be a 100page PDS that promises a 5% pa return on every page, but due to a typo on 1 page states 50% pa. would a reasonable person expect 50% return? ever other page said 5%.
im 99.9% sure all their statements will hold up in court. they promised binding offers and recieved them. they said EPS may be valued at less than face value or current market value and it is.
you basically need to prove that you were mislead by the value statement. you may be able to prove that the wording was not clear. but they may argue that you read into it correctly. ie EPS may have come out of the restructure worth less than market value.
how you could ever disprove that will be hard. i know its a big descrepency less than 10c-43c, but its not misleading when either outcome was possible at time of announcement.
they will undoubtly look into your entire BBI/Beppa trading and rebuying that final time may hurt your case.
Alot of effort and legal advice goes into official asx ann. i believe BBI always kept everyone informed to the exact extent required by law. nothing more or less. would it have been nice to be kept in the loop regarding asset sales and recap? sure. but at what point were they obliged to make the market aware? probably at the point they did.
BBI Price at posting:
3.6¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
