Options and Insider Trading?Was the CEO insider trading?
If you read the actual July the 8th Mitsui Matsushima Co., Ltd. Release it gives more information, especially about Thyssen selling to Mitsui Matsushima its European & South American
Marketing for Cline Coal Resources.
It also says the initial sale occured July 4th, 1 day after Ken Bates sold shares on July 3, 2008.
Here is the reasoning;
1. Thyssen Krupp had European and South American Marketing rights to Cline Coal Reserves.
2. On June 23, 2008 Cline announced the Mitsui loan MOA and in it it stated ;
"The memorandum of understanding also provides that Cline and MMI will enter into a coal marketing and sales agency agreement under which MMI will be the
exclusive marketing and sales agent worldwide with respect to the sale of all New Elk coals."
3. According to the Sedar Early Warning Report and the Mitsui Matsushima Report the agreement was made June 13, 2008 between Mitsui Matsushima and Thyssen Krupp.
4. If Cline & Bates did not know Thyssen was selling it shares and Thyssen had Europen & South American Marketing rights to Cline's Coal (This reported by Mitsui in its release
..."As a result of this transaction the company will aquire from Thyssen Krupp the European and South American marketing rights for coking coal from the coal reserves owned by Cline"...see link below) , then how on June 23, 2008 could they announce in that Memorandum of Understanding that Mitsui would get worldwide marketing rights?
("The Memorandum of Understanding also provides that Cline and MMI will enter into a coal marketing and sales agency agreement under which MMI will be the exclusive marketing and sales agent worldwide with respect to the sale of all New Elk coals") (
https://www.clinemining.com/news/pdf/080623.pdf)
5. On July 4, 2008 Mitsui makes its initial purchase of shares from Thyssen at $1.41.
6. Coincidentally?? Ken Bates sells 50,000 shares of CMK for $1.90 on July 3rd, just one day before Mitsui's initial purchase of 4.4m of the shares at $1.41 which was agreed to back on June 13th. On June 23rd, Cline announces that Mitsui is getting worldwide rights in a MOU, something they could not do if there was not already that pre-existing agreement between Mitsui & Thyssen for Mitsui to buy Thyssens shares.. So Mitsui is buying Thyssen's shares at 50 cents below the market price....what do you think is going to happen to Cline's stockprice when that news hit the market, it is going to drop, and that is exactly what it did...dropped like a rock. Yet coincidentally Ken Bates was able to unload shares one day , July 3rd, before the initial sale of shares between Mitsui & Thyssen was transacted (July 4).
So did Ken Bates know about all of this? One would reasonably argue that how could he have not known about Thyssen selling its shares because in the June 23 Cline news release Cline stated that Mitsui would get exclusive worldwide rights to sell Cline's coal....something Mitsui did not have prior to Mitsui's June 13th agreement with Thyssen, an agreement which only came to light in a Cline press release from Mitsui on July 7th and in Mitsui's subsequent July 8th press release. Thyssen bailing out and selling its shares would be material information, yet Ken Bates' selling shares occured one day before Mitsui made its initial purchase of shares, a purchase all of us had to wait till later on to hear about....and in June 13th agreement made between Thyssen and Mitsui which allowed Cline to announce the MOU with exclusive rights on June 23rd.
Read the following Mitsui Release. Strange how much more information it it has on the sale of the Marketing rights for Mitsui in it than what Cline had disclosed.
https://www.irstreet.com/en/document.php?brand=128&document_url=http%3A//ircms.irstreet.com/contents/data_file.php%3Ftemplate%3D51%26brand%3D128%26folder_contents%3D15710%26src_data%3D60677%26filename%3Dpdf_file.pdf&url=http%3A//www.irstreet.com/en/brand.php%3F%26content%3Dbrand_newsrelease%26brand%3D128