excerpt
“How many shareholders are we talking about altogether?”
Walden asked.
“Sixteen shareholders, sixteen declarations, sixteen new certs, as
soon as each certificate is officially accepted by the trust company as
lost,” Eteo replied.
“It will take too long.”
“It will take a while, yes,” Eteo conceded, “but it’s the only way
we can avoid admitting that the certs were lodged with a single
trustee.” They all knew this was against the rules and would mean
trouble, yet Eteo’s advice was rejected by the others, and the following
Monday morning they reported the stock certs lost. As Eteo had predicted,
the first thing the VSE official asked was, “Where did you have
your share certificates lodged and how did they all get lost at once?”
They had to reveal that all the shares had been given to one trustee,
and before they could say another word the VSE man listed at least
a dozen rules they had broken. The most serious was that, in lodging
their shares in a place, they had in effect cornered the market and
manipulated the trading price, presenting a false share value to potential
investors.
The VSE immediately issued a cease trading order in Target Resources
shares from which the company never recovered. Every
shareholder suffered a total loss, Mario and his people, Eteo and his
people, Robert and his people, a total of sixteen investors and every
shareholder who bought the IPO shares. Only much later, after the
whole mess had almost been forgotten, did Eteo find out what Mario
and the crooked promoter had done. Somehow, he managed to extract
a little bit of compensation from that promoter, but he lost a lot
of trust in Mario. Until then Mario had managed all the companies
Eteo put together and collected fees of 3,000 per month, plus office
space at 1,000 per month, for each company. After he found out
about what had really gone on in the Target Resources deal, Eteo
pulled out of Mario’s management company. Now he and Robert
were agreeing to give Mario another chance only because the Italian
had brought them such a big win with Platinum Properties.
The day after the meeting at Sewell’s, Eteo was back in his office
dealing with his typical routine: a discussion with John …
Hellenic Canadian Literature 