Some of the recent signatures to this petition have come from shareholders in the company isignthis Ltd (ISX). The company Chairman Nicholas John Karantzis has also signed. The ISX situation is extraordinary considering it has been suspended by the ASX for the past 10 weeks for very little reason.
Forgive me for sounding a bit conspiratorial here but it is quite unusual for the ASX to suspend a company on the basis they have done here. One rule imposed on some - another rule for others. From my contacts within the shareholder bases at ISX, the ISX board of directors have done nothing wrong.
Initially the reason given for the suspension was share price volatility. The most concerning thing is the ASX hasn't come out and said the real reason for the suspension. There have been four rounds of questioning from the ASX. These questions have been in regards to where revenue has been coming from, the issuing of performance rights and other questions surrounding a Danish Bank they used. Some of these questions go back to things that happened in 2018 and still the ASX has not given an official reason. There is a sense that they are trying to throw enough mud to make something stick. The ASX also requested commercially sensitive information from ISX and never gave any undertaking that the commercially sensitive information they were requesting would be treated in confidence.
So the Directors at ISX are taking the ASX to court. Bravo! The ASX should not be allowed to bully companies like ISX.
Another possible reason the ASX has imposed this suspension on ISX is that one of the ASX Directors is a substantial shareholder of a direct competitor to ISX - the ASX director owns over 5% of Identii (ID8).
The ASX do not suspend a company unless it is in the best financial interests of the ASX or some linked entity that provides a lot of profits to the ASX. For example the ASX allows price manipulating high frequency traders to operate because they pay the ASX a lot of money to be in the position to manipulate share prices.
Another personal example from the ASX:
Last year I was involved in many companies where I wanted to contact shareholders to inform them of some dubious actions taken by the directors. The only way to contact shareholders is to obtain the share registry costing $275. Because of the cost very few people take this option despite it being available to every shareholder. Then I did mailouts to individual shareholders - it adds up. If there are 5000 shareholders that's $5000 cost just to let people know you think everyone is being screwed over. And sometimes people are so apathetic they hardly even care they are being screwed over or they just complain that its all a waste of time trying to do anything about it. Its pretty demoralising.
So I achieved very little in doing 5 mailouts. But one thing I did learn from the whole process is just how many scams are going on, with the regulator and the ASX knowing what goes on and not stopping it. In every register I found hundreds of company names all at the same few addresses all with 1 or 2 shares. I paid more money to find out who were the actual owners of these companies at each address. One was a fund manager (in one company they had 42 companies at two addresses all with just a few shares). Another was a prominent academic at a sydney university who lectures on market transparency and market fairness and mentors PhD students who are doing their PhD's at ASIC and the ASX (I kid you not). Another was someone who has a criminal record already from ASIC for using false addresses to bolster up the numbers of IPO's (For a company to list on the ASX in an IPO there must be a minimum number of shareholders).
The sad thing was, in the 6 registers I obtained, these same people and funds were in every single one - so they were doing whatever scam they were doing in just about every stock on the ASX.
After much dialogue with other shareholders and the ASX I concluded there were two scams. The first was that IPO's are continually listed on the ASX and they don't meet the minimum criteria for number of shareholders so they are just making up the numbers with false companies. The second thing is they are rorting the share purchase plan system. When some companies need to raise capital they over share purchase plans where every single shareholders whether they own a million shares or 1 share can apply for $15,000 worth of new shares at a discounted price. It is a common way of raising capital these days. Just google share purchase plan and you will see several companies doing it just this month. So if they have twenty companies they can apply for up to 20 x $15,000 and then they can immediately sell their shares for a quick profit.
When I told this to Tom Randall at the ASX he wasn't concerned. He said it was the latter reason but regardless of whether they are rorting the share purchase plans or trying to rort the minimum shareholder requirements for listing on the ASX, they are still rorting. Its also worth knowing that the ASX make a lot of money for every IPO, and they make a lot of money from all the pump and dump companies and it is in the best interest of the ASX for companies to have successful share purchase plan capital raisings no matter how dodgy the company is. I have even heard they make money from every single ASX announcement. Now you have many ex-ASX compliance officers working for individual ASX companies which should be called dubious even fraudulent. One Ex-ASX compliance officer is company secretary to 13 ASX companies, all of which have made losses for their shareholders.
Does the ASX suspend these 13 very dubious companies run by this very dubious ex-ASX compliance officer? Nope - but they do suspend a company like ISX which is direct competition to a comoanies part owned by an ASX director. Call that conspiratorial if you want. I call that very suspicious.
Could it be that the ASX only uphold regulations when it suits them? It certainly seems that way when it comes to the suspension of ISX.