Hi JB, I'm afraid you're howling at the wind on this issue. It's...

Hi JB, I'm afraid you're howling at the wind on this issue. It's not a CYP specific problem. I appreciate your position that you would like as much time as a soph to review a presentation but that's not the way the market works and it's standard procedure allowed by the law. A company seeking to make a placement will provide information to relevant brokers who in turn provide it to other brokers/ sub-underwriters and thence to prospective investors for the purposes of facilitating the raising. This might be disseminated in the evening (after market close) or the next morning, with a trading halt announced. This information is exempt from Continuous Disclosure rules.

If you refer to https://www.novuscapital.com.au/novus-notes/capital-raising-placement-q-a but particularly 4th bullet point under 2:

• complying with continuous disclosure requirements under Listing Rule 3.1. Generally, the raising of capital by an ASX listed company would be subject to continuous disclosure obligations. As such, it would be important to ensure that proposed placement parties are subject to confidentiality obligations to be able to fall within the incomplete proposal exception to the disclosure requirements, until the capital raising is finalised.

The Incomplete proposal exception is found in the Corporations Regulations 6CA.1.01(c)(iv)

https://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_reg/cr2001281/s6ca.1.01.html

Any invitation to a soph has a confidentiality provision attached to it. Until the placement is finalised it is incomplete, and yes, I have seen proposed placements change between first notice and what actually ends up being completed.

Sophs breach the confidentiality provision all the time on the basis that with the market closed or stock in a halt there is no danger of committing an insider trading offence under s1043A (noting that mere possession of inside information is not in any way illegal).

There is an issue, which ASIC has expressed concern about (but doesn't seem to be doing much about), with respect to the practice of companies sounding out brokers about a proposed placement whilst still trading, leading to a common scenario of the stock selling off ahead of the halt. This is more a lack of integrity by the brokers rather than the company though.