No - not at this stage. But it certainly may have had a much greater role at other times in the last seven months.
The current listing on the ASX site shows:
CNP CENTRO PROPERTIES GROUP. STAPLED 11,214,553 84,511,597 1.32
So a limited number of legitimate short sells (11M stock), but the whole issue is that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and the borrowed short selling doesn't show up in a ledger and there is no legislation that covers borrowed short selling.
If there was information in the marketplace that showed what the actual level of short selling was, it would be incredibly valuable to market participants. If you could see that there was an obvious "shorting raid" on a stock (such as BNB recently), investors would be informed as to whether to sell out or not. As it stands, we are heavily in the dark as to whether it is real selling (by investors) or a shorting raid.
I'm a strong believer in shorting for healthy markets - it allows weak companies to be sold down when organisations or individuals smell blood in the water and cull stocks from the investor landscape in an efficient (although not necessarily happy) manner. However, when stocks are sold down to a point that the company can no longer raise effective capital, the borrowed shorting can bring a company with an otherwise healthy business plan to its knees.
If Centro has been sold down to the $2 level and stayed there, they would be at a point where the could issues a rights capability (such as WES) to cover part of the short term debt.
As it stands however, they can't raise enough cash from a capital raising at 24 cents - they would need to raise about the current market capitalisation to make a dent in their debt!
BTW - thanks Tweety for the article...
All the best.
CNP Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
