Luxoil market ‘created’

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 10

Luxoil market ‘created’

PA Wellington The chairman of Luxoil, NL, Mr D. L. Lux, helped create an artificial market for his company’s shares by dealing through nominees, the New Zealand Stock Exchange’s executive committee said yesterday afternoon. The exchange suspended Luxoil earlier this month and asked Mr Lux to provide information on nominee dealings from December 1, 1985, to February 11 this year. The information was promptly given, the executive’s statement says. '

Mr Lux’s dealings through several nominees made up more than three-quarters of the shares traded in that time, it said, and “tended to create a market in the company’s shares which was artificial and did not truly reflect actual investor interest.” It was also the executive’s opinion that, “by dealing in the company’s shares around the time of its balance date, Mr Lux, as a director, did not, appear to be conforming with the recommended standards for directors’ dealings in their companies’ shares set out in the exchange’s ‘Guidelines for securities transactions by directors of companies’,” it said. The executive has advised all other Luxoil directors of Its findings.