I look back to the Air Canada restructuring... I recieved an E mail from Canaccord stating that AC would be restructured and the new shares would be IPO'd at $20.00/ share
The old stock was to be amalgamated into this new issue.... at a converson rate of 11,800 approx to 1 new share. This was several weeks prior to the restructuring. The stock continued to trade... and on astonishing volume, many days trading multiples of the entire float!
This could only happen with short selling.... The conversion shares eliminated this shortfall....The original shorted shares were replaced with new shares.
The minimum trading price on a Canadian exchange is $ .005
As long as someone was willing to buy these short shares at any price huge profits were made.... 11,800 x .005 = $59.00
$20.00 / 11800= is approx .17 cents / share cost
I destinctly remember this event, as a family member asked me if they should buy AC at that time, it was trading arround $.30 to .35 / share....
Many millions were made off this short sell....if you were able to lock down a position in that new replacement stock.
Now picture the same thing happening globally on the Dow or TSE
The president has been set..... will regulators act to prevent this type of event happening again?
The Canadian regulators did nothing to prevent this rip off!