Sad Movies Make Me Cry We have seen this tear-jerker before.
Sino-Forest (TSX- TRE) is the largest stock market fraud ever perpetuated in Canada by Mr. Chan, a Hong Kong Citizen, and his co-scammer, a former forestry official in China. They managed to overstate the forestry assets in China that were fabricated with documentations fooling investors and Ernst & Young, their Canadian auditors. The Sino-Forest CCAA bankruptcy caused $6 billion in market losses for common shareholders v. $1 billion of paper losses in the former Pacific E & P (PRE),
TRE shareholders recovered nothing from the sale of Company's assets except they got millions in settlement by suing the auditors for negligence. Don't know how much each class member got back, but likely not that much.
For instance, Nortel Neworks filed for CCAA bankuptcy protection and some person posted that he only got back $40 from his investment losses amounting to $3,000. Because Nortel was able to later sell off their valuable patents for over $7 billion and with $4 billion cash seized, all debt holders received pretty much all of their money back ($11 billion in total debts).
Another e.g. cited - the "old" Air Canada filed for CCAA protection, and their shareholders got nothing back after it emerged from CCAA proceedings as the New Air Canada.
https://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/sino-forests-restructuring-deal-leaves-shareholders-cut-out I believe some former shareholders in PRE are wrong to accuse the promoters of putting the Company into bankruptcy inorder to steal the assets - a hard-to-prove conspiracy theory because the Co. followed the IFRS impairment rules. I think to prevail here, former shareholders need to prove that the management had "overstated" the oil assets by fraud and enriched themselves in stock options and remuneration based on stock performance. Just remember, PRE was managed by the same promoters that grew from a VSE penny stock on Howe Street known as the "Scam Capital of the World" in the 80's. This Co. expanded by means of mergers and acquisitions where fraud could easily be perpetuated in falsifying oil assets by way of non-arm's dealings. Taking massive writeoffs in oil assets from a high of $9 billion down to $1 billion would cover up the tracks for possible fraudulent acts nicely. So far, there is no proof of that.
Fair Disclosure: I owned no shares in any of the above companies mentioned hereunder.