Burford – Illegal Market Manipulation?

Burford Capital (BUR) have issued an announcement that makes a number of allegations about the events surrounding the recent shorting attack on the company involving Muddy Waters. It includes:

• Spoofing and layering to move the share price, e.g. putting in numerous share sales on the order book and cancelling them before they can be filled.
• That includes numerous such transactions just before Muddy Waters issued a tweet giving Burford as the target, and as that tweet was delayed only Muddy Waters or its associates could have known of the timing.
• Exiting their short position by buying Burford shares at the same time as continuing on the same day to make their allegations.
• Falsely alleging the company was “insolvent” which would have been picked up by algorithmic traders.

They allege these activities are simply illegal and have informed the regulatory authorities on the matter, plus hired three large law firms (Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and Morrison & Foerster LLP) plus a Professor at New York’s Columbia University who is an expert to look into the trading activity.

For those not familiar with market manipulation techniques, just read the Burford announcement for a good explanation: https://tinyurl.com/y6xrs38h.

Let us hope that the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) promptly looks into these complaints, and that the Financial Report Council (FRC) also investigates the accounts and past audits of the firm. Despite Burford being a very large company, it is listed on AIM so the AIM regulators (i.e. the LSE) and its NOMAD should also be looking into the matter surely?

As I said in a previous blog post here: https://tinyurl.com/yy9pamh5, one of the problems in most shorting attacks is the mixture of possibly true and false allegations, which the shorter has not even checked with the target company, along with unverifiable claims and innuendo. The shorter can make a lot of money by such tactics while it can take months for the truth or otherwise of the allegations to be researched and revealed. By which time the shorter has long moved on to other targets.

Shorting is not wrong in principle, but combining it with questionable public announcements is surely market manipulation, which is covered by the law on market abuse.

To remind you, I have never held any position in Burford Capital, short or long, and there are good reasons why not which I give below. But I have held shares in other companies which have been the victim of shorting attacks – in one case justifiable in another not, so I would like to see some reform of this area of the market.

As regards Burford, just reviewing this company against the check lists given in my new book, it would have failed as an investment proposition on several counts. These are:

• Smaller transactions (Chapter 2). Burford’s profits are very dependent on a few large legal cases. Any problems in such cases could wipe out the profits whereas companies who have many smaller contracts rather than a few large ones are less vulnerable to surprises.
• Repeat business (Chapter 2). Every legal case they pursue is a “one-off” transaction which means there is no certainty of future such business.
• Short term contacts (Chapter 2). The legal case the company pursues can take years to finally resolve, i.e. they are long-term contracts rather than short-term ones. This means they are complex in accounting terms and risky.
• No risk of Government regulation (Chapter 4). This area of legal practice is very much subject to Government regulation and has significantly changed in recent years.
• Applicable listing rules (Chapter 7). The company is listed on AIM which is a much lighter touch regulatory regime than that for fully listed companies despite the fact that it is a very large business (market cap still £1.8 billion even after recent share price falls).
• Adhere to corporate governance code (Chapter 7). Corporate governance at this company is odd to say the least with directors serving for more than ten years and no executive management on the board. In addition the CFO is married to the CEO.
• AGMs at convenient time and place (Chapter 7). The company holds its AGMs in Guernsey where it is registered.
• Accounts easy to understand and accounts prudent and consistent (Chapter 8). I would certainly question whether both the recognition of the value of on-going legal claims in the accounts is prudent. It is also very difficult for any outsider to judge the merits of the claims.
• Do profits turn into cash (Chapter 10). From the 2018 accounts: Pre-tax profit was £307 million while Cash Outflow from Operating Activities was £233 million. Enough said.

The above are just a few easy points to pick out, but I could go on at some length on why I would not have invested in Burford and did not despite it being regularly tipped in the financial press.

See here for the book details that includes the checklists used in the above analysis: https://www.roliscon.com/business-perspective-investing.html 

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )