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SHAC Press Release: Shareholders Drop, Defendants Plead Guilty

SHAC | 30.07.2008 23:09 | SHAC | Animal Liberation | Health | Repression | London | World

July 30th: Another Shareholder Drops HLS, SHAC UK Defendants Plead Guilty



Some of you may by now have heard that 3 of the defendants in the SHAC UK conspiracy trial have pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to blackmail at Winchester Crown Court. Two of the campaigners, Gregg and Natasha Avery  http://myspace.com/supportukprisoners were already in prison awaiting trial, the other, Dan Amos  http://myspace.com/supportdan, has now also been remanded.

Please write letters of support to Dan and all the prisoners. As soon as Dan's number and address is confirmed it will be posted on the VPSG website  http://vpsg.org. Show your solidarity and support at this, one of many injustices we fight to stop. Get angry, get active.

It is important to remember that this is just three of the thousands of SHAC activists and anti-vivisectionists in many countries around the world, and the campaign continues against HLS and against vivisection.

To illustrate the point, today we received cofirming news that yet another institutional shareholder, Acadian Asset Management (Old Mutual) have sold their shares. This is the third company to dump HLS shares in less than a month. This leaves the largest institutional shareholder, Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings Ltd hold 279,842 shares in HLS (LSR), who are part of Barclays Bank. Their website is  http://barclaysglobal.com (There will be an email alert about them very soon).

To put this in perspective, this means that less than 5% of HLS shares are currently being traded. Meanwhile HLS are still around $80million in debt, they don't own their own buildings or land, and are being propped up by the UK gove rnment who are continuing to provide banking and insurance facilities for a US registered company. This is an absurd position unprecedented in the history of commerce or protest groups, hundreds of millions of taxpayers money is being used to keep HLS afloat, while even more taxpayers money is used by the same government to persecute those who try to stop the suffering of both human and non-human animals.

We are all part of SHAC and we will all continue the fight against one of the most disgusting and exposed companies in the world.

Nobody said it was going to be easy, we must now re-double our anger and commitment. Don't forget that HLS have to pay back one of their loans of $50 million in a few years and we must not let HLS out of our grasp. Remember, the only reason HLS is still here is because of our corrupt government and it cancome as no surprise, as this is the same government that are partners in an illegal war. They will not let ethical considerations cloud their goal of making money, at any cost. But their unethical policies will cost them dearly in the long run, the fight goes on.

SHAC
- e-mail: shac-uk@lists.riseup.net
- Homepage: http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/shac-uk

Comments

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When you sell sombody has to buy

31.07.2008 07:42

There is much talk of dumping shares - in fact all you can do is sell them - to sombody else.

So every share 'dump' also represents an investment.

The Economist


Nope

31.07.2008 09:29

"There is much talk of dumping shares - in fact all you can do is sell them - to sombody else."

Not true. You sell them back to the exchange.

"Right now the percentage of HLS's institutional investments is listed at 8.63%. Once the H Partners shares come off it will reduce to about 4 - 4.5%" - 29th July, SHAC

This was before Old Mutual also sold an extra 15,000 HLS shares.

Investment has halved and is disappearing.

Economist2


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First comment correct

31.07.2008 10:52

The first "economist" is correct.

In one sense, if everybody dumped their shares of HLS this would not affect the company. The direct affect of the price of shares falling is only if the company itself holds a block of it's own stock (not unusual). But there are many indirect effects.

a) makes it difficult/impossible for the company to issue new shares (dilution of equity). Assume for a moment that in order to bring in more capital, the shareholder of a company as represented by its board agreed to dilute equity 50% (issue one new share for every share outstanding). How much these NEW shares might bring depends upon the market evaluation of the total existing shares.

b) borrowing money. Most companies operate not just on their own capital but more or less leveraged by borrowing and these are generally "open" loans that need to be refinanced periodicly (could also be bonds, they too get refinanced but at longer time intervals). A low stock evaluation (little equity) makes the refinaincing more difficult. The company is in a poor posiiton to issue new stock to bring in more capital to reduce the leverage percentage.

The second "economist" all wrong -- shares are never sold "back to the exchange". However wioth thinly traded stocks there is usually a "specialist" aka "market maker" who undertakes to buy or sell this stock in order that a public market for it exists. That should explain the campaigns to knock out market makers for HLS.

With regard to institutional stock holding, these are not usually dumped onto the public market and may be far too large for the market makers to handle. In these cases usually one institution negotiates a private sale to another. Any time you hear that a deal has been done FAST (like in this case) you should assume that is what happened. If an institution wanted to rid itself of a 5% stake into the public market it might spread that over many months.

My suspicion here is that what will happen is that the large block holders will arrange to disperse their blocks into chunks below the reporting required threshhold and from "public" holders to "private" equity firms. If 3% is below the threshhold and "equity investors Q" is a private firm, how are you SHAC folks going to know that they hold a block of 3% of HLS stock? (I haven't a clue whether legal in the UK to announce if you knew; haven't a clue about that for here either)

Mike Novack
mail e-mail: stepbyspefarm mtdata.com


Err..Nope

31.07.2008 12:33

Sell it to the Exchange?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market

The First Economist


Share prices

31.07.2008 23:03

Economist my friend. You may be right but when lots of people sell their shares in a company then the share price falls making the company weaker. Am I wrong?

Ruby


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