Stock trades above board, says broker

Papa Securities Corp. on Wednesday denied allegations made by a group calling itself Pinoy Investment Club that the stockbrokerage firm had engaged in the manipulation of the share price of publicly listed Oriental Peninsula Resources Group.

In a letter to the Inquirer, Papa Securities executive vice president Homer Perez said the company’s selling activities were made on behalf of a “large institutional investor totally unrelated to the ORE Group.”

“The selling occurred at a time when the market was going down and metals prices were weak causing a sell-off in the mining sector,” he said in the letter.

Perez was reacting to Wednesday’s Biz Buzz column, which carried details of the complaint lodged by Pinoy Investment Club against the ORE board regarding the sharp drop of the company’s share price.

“The orders to sell was given by our client and we just executed,” Perez said. “There was no reason for us not to accept these orders.”

The Papa Securities official added that “The Pinoy Investment Club which wrote the directors of ORE is a ‘phantom’ organization whose members are unknown.”

“It is easy to create anonymous organizations and hurl baseless accusation for the purpose of besmirching other people’s reputations,” he said.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Perez also lamented that Papa Securities was not given the chance to air its side before the Biz Buzz item was published, saying the report was “a very serious charge” that also “puts into question the reputation of other members of the Philippine Stock Exchange.”

“Mr. Lucas only called to get our side in the morning after the article came out,” he said. “The damage has been done. I will not even speculate on the motives of Mr. Lucas on coming out with an article which clearly violates much of the ideals that PDI has proudly stood for.”