While I disagree with your OP that recent share price movement...

While I disagree with your OP that recent share price movement was a pump-and-dump, you're spot on here. No markets are as advanced as Canada. While CAN is the industry leader in Australia we are still at a much earlier stage.

Now in terms of it being a pump-and-dump - I'm not entirely sure you know exactly what that means. Speculation of a takeover, especially when talks of said takeover have been confirmed by both parties, is a legitimate reason for the share price to surge and be re-rated. You'd be fooling yourself if you weren't expecting a pull-back however. Traders always take their profits. If your claim of a pump-and-dump were to be true we should have seen a spike in the price before the announcement, then the pump, and then the dump.

Then again, everyone sees things differently.