View Single Post
  #5  
Old 09-02-2005, 03:32 PM
DesertCat DesertCat is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Posts: 224
Default Re: Free gift for the forum....

[ QUOTE ]
going private transaction is where it better for the company to go private than to stay public, so to achieve this they do a rev split followed by foward split of the same size to get rid of share holders holding less than the split size, the ones removed our offered a tender amount. Like the last the one I did was ASBP where it was 300:1 so hold 300 shares you get the difference between the tender price and the price you bought. For me it was around $1/share profit, pretty much risk free over 4 accts(1200 shares)

[/ QUOTE ]

These transactions are far from risk free. There are groups of investors on the internet (besides the site you linked to) tracking these opportunities.

This creates a problem. The company does an analysis that says, at price X, and with Y small shareholders (those holding less than the split number of shares) their cost will be X*Y. But once they announce, the going private cost becomes X*(Y+Z) where Z is the number of arbitragers who've jumped in. And like the OP, most of these arbitragers open multiple acounts to try to double or triple dip. I have on friend who's opened something like 50 accounts for going private deals.

So when the company recalculates the cost with all the new "free riders" included, they realize their cashout costs just doubled or tripled. Way too often, they cancel the transaction.

Examples include SNET, GCFC, and KMG (which was actually a tender where odd lots were supposed to be taken 100%).

If you want to do these deals you should think defensively. Try to do ten or so at a time, so that one or two blowups won't kill you. Only take on deals where the company has financial resources to to the split, even if the cost goes up. Avoid struggling companies with weak balance sheets.
Reply With Quote