UK-based commodities reporter Pratima Desai appears to have either been a useful idiot or a willing accomplice to a stock price run and subsequent insider sell-off of Canadian smallcap mining explorer Giga Metals (GIGA.V) after a false story based on unnamed sources suggesting the company was ‘in discussions’ to partnering with Tesla (TSLA.Q).
LONDON (Reuters) – Tesla is in discussions with Canadian miner Giga Metals about helping to develop a large mine that would give the electric carmaker access to low carbon nickel for its batteries, three sources familiar with the matter said.
Standard journalism practice would suggest those sources be named, or at least quoted, with information confirming the opening sentence of the story. But nowhere in the story did anyone say words that confirmed – or even suggested – that Tesla was indeed in talks with the company about helping to develop their proposed billion dollar nickel mine.
In fact, the President of Giga declined to comment on Tesla for the story, instead explaining, “Giga is actively engaged, and has been for some time, with automakers regarding our ability to produce carbon neutral nickel.”
As soon as the story was posted, GIGA stock went on a rampage. The Globe and Mail repeated the fake story, being as Reuters is a trusted syndication partner, which added to the interest levels.
This forced the CEO of the company to issue a note reminding folks there was no material information on the way.
GIGA METALS PROVIDES UPDATE ON RECENT TRADING ACTIVITY
Giga Metals Corp. has provided an update regarding recent media reports.
“Giga Metals has been mentioned in recent media articles as they pertain to ongoing efforts to advance the Turnagain deposit to commercialization,” said Martin Vydra, president. “What I can say is that there is no material announcement forthcoming and we will keep regulators and investors informed of any material changes that require disclosure in accordance with securities regulations.”
Where things get suspect is what happened a month earlier, when company director Anthony Milewski executed 1.5 million stock options at $0.08 per, for $120,000, despite the stock having been illiquid for over a year.
A week after that, GIGA’s long dormant stock suddenly took off, from around $0.30 to near $0.75, in a single day.
Milewski’s timing was impeccable. Desai’s story was posted on September 11 and it took the GIGA market cap from $38 million to over $150 million.
The day after the story, with the stock hitting $2.40 early, Milewski dropped the hammer and dumped 3 million shares at an average of $1.86, for $5.57 million, with the stock going as low as $1.40 during his sell-off.
Two days later he sold another 450,000 shares for an average of $1.61, bringing him another $724,000.
Milewski’s selling was so intense and sudden, it tripped circuit breakers that halted the stock several times in a day.
But Milewski wasn’t alone in his pillaging of his own company. Here’s Giga President Martin Vydra following suit, exercising 900,000 options at around $0.40, and immediately dumping them over two days at a price of $1.97 down to $1.46. good for $1.5 million stuffed into his back pocket.
- UPDATE: Since this story was written, Vydra has sold another $750,000 worth of company stock.
Worth noting Vydra KNEW THE REUTERS STORY WAS COMING because he was quoted in it.
Giga Metals’s President Martin Vydra declined to comment on any talks with Tesla, but said: “Giga is actively engaged, and has been for some time, with automakers regarding our ability to produce carbon neutral nickel.
This is important because Giga Metals chairman Lyle Davis executed his options TWO DAYS BEFORE DESAI’S STORY DROPPED. He was in such a rush to profit, he didn’t even wait for the stock to finish rising before dumping his stake for whatever he could get.
Poor unsophisticated Lyle never even got to see the top before his portfolio was emptied.
$1.01, Lyle? You fucking rube.
Late today, the Giga Metals CFO Matt Anderson began his own sell-off, following the execution of his options.
If that’s all too much information to process in text form, here’s the chart with all the insider moves highlighted.
To be clear, there is no Tesla deal with Giga.
- We know this because, if there was, the President and the Chairman and their Director would hold on to every share like it was their firstborn.
- We also know this because the company CEO said in the article there’s no deal coming.
- We also know this because, if a deal was coming, directors exercising options would be an insider trading violation.
There’s no deal coming, and these guys made bank because a false story set them up to do so.
The CEO of the company has thus far avoided scrutiny, because he said in the Reuters story there was no news coming, and repeated that when the stock was on a run.
Good job. Except for the image of the Tesla Gigafactory on the company website a few days ago, and this:
Screenshot of a deleted tweet from the Giga account earlier this week. pic.twitter.com/QcNZO8Ztsx
— Brown (@lifeofbrown) September 18, 2020
INCRIMINATING.
So the question now moves to, is Desai just terrible at her job, which led to GIGA’s head honchos having an opportunity to massively profit from options they coincidentally executed days and weeks earlier, or did Desai intentionally set GIGA up for a run so that insiders could benefit while retail shareholders got ravaged?
In short: Did Desai sell access to her position at Reuters willingly, or did she get used?
Looking at her story history at Reuters, it’s clear exclusive stories about Canadian smallcaps are few and far between. In fact, between the Giga story’s posting and last April, she only wrote about one other smallcap, a benign story (again quoting unnamed sources, but at least with accurate information) about First Cobalt (FCC.V).
Most of her work is about commodity prices at the London Metal Exchange and is standard vanilla journalism workhorse stuff.
So why write about a Canadian company, completely out of the blue, when that company is saying there’s no story here, and your ‘three sources familiar with the matter’ aren’t even quoted as saying what your opening line suggests they’re saying?
Our digging suggests Desai has a tendency to occasionally drop a story based on certain companies, often with the ‘exclusive’ tag, where she always seems to find ‘sources familiar with the deal.’
Like these stories, about the trading firm Traxys, that seem to pump that company pretty hard.
September 4, 2020
LONDON (Reuters) – Trading firm Traxys has won a tender to sell cobalt metal for Wheaton Precious Metals, two sources familiar with the matter said, in a deal that propels it into the big league to rival the likes of Glencore in the valuable commodity.LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Commodity trading firm Traxys has agreed to market large amounts of Norilsk Nickel’s production of battery metal cobalt for up to three years, effective immediately, three sources familiar with the matter said.
In both instances, the companies in question declined to confirm the story.
Wheaton declined to comment on the result of the tender, but said in a statement: “We are still in the process of determining a suitable marketing/sales program to ensure we maximize the value we receive from the metal.”
“Not a single one of our contracts can affect any other contract. We do not have exclusivity in our relationship with any of our counterparts,” Nornickel told Reuters, when asked whether it had signed the contract with Traxys and whether the contract would affect the deal with BASF.
Also in both stories, Traxys ‘declined to comment.’
Now, I couldn’t tell you whether it’s true that Traxys got those deals or not because commodities trading works in private for the most part. Nobody can, because Wheaton doesn’t comment on such things one way or another, and Traxys can’t comment publicly or it would never get another deal again.
So it’s probably useful to Traxys that there’s a journalist out there that will do their bidding for them, based on ‘unnamed sources’, and that her story will go everywhere because she’s working out of Reuters which is, you know, respected.
You know when Pratima is doing someone else’s bidding when she opens with ‘EXCLUSIVE‘ and makes a grand claim based on unnamed sources.
Here’s a sampling:
LONDON (Reuters) – The London Metal Exchange’s gold and silver futures are being thrown into doubt, with the imminent resignation of Societe Generale as a market maker threatening to deepen a decline in trading activity, three sources said.
LONDON/SINGAPORE, July 5 (Reuters) – Tsingshan and other firms investing in an electric vehicle battery chemical plant in Indonesia will have to pay significantly more than a $700 million price tag estimated last year, three sources familiar with the matter said.
LONDON (Reuters) – The London Metal Exchange (LME) has dismissed a complaint from miner and commodity trader Glencore over its inability to take fast delivery of aluminum from warehouses owned by ISTIM UK in Port Klang, Malaysia, two sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.
LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Glencore has lodged a complaint with the London Metal Exchange (LME) about the company’s inability to take speedy delivery of aluminium from warehouses owned by ISTIM UK in Port Klang, Malaysia, two sources familiar with the matter said.
LONDON, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Mining giant Glencore has bought 200,000 tonnes of aluminium on the London Metal Exchange and will take delivery of the metal from warehouses owned by ISTIM UK in Port Klang, Malaysia, five sources familiar with the matter said.
LONDON (Reuters) – Years after sweeping reform aimed at eliminating logjams in warehouses that collect rent for storing metal, a firm is preventing companies from getting material when they need it from a Malaysian port, five sources close to the matter said.
Five sources! And not one will be named?
I’ve worked at large news organizations and if I tried to sneak that past my editors, they’d have hauled me into the managing editor’s office to explain myself.
Why are Pratima’s sources never named? And why does she not write about individual companies – unless they’re Praxys, Glencore, or ISTIM (or, more recently, seemingly at random – Giga Metals)?
If you’re unconvinced there’s a smoking gun here, let’s travel back to 2017, when Pratima dropped a story about the market debut of a company called Cobalt 27.
LONDON (Reuters) – Minerals company Cobalt 27 Capital Corp KBLT.V made its debut on Canada’s Venture Exchange on Friday, raising C$200 million ($150.7 million) in a listing that offers investors exposure to cobalt, a key metal for batteries in electric cars.
No big deal? Seems a pretty straight news story, no ‘unnamed sources’ necessary, though it’s also REALLY short on actual news and reads like paid media.
So why am I noting this?
It’s not the what, it’s the who.
“We’re a pure play on cobalt and a thematic play on electric vehicles,” Cobalt 27 Chief Executive Anthony Milewski told Reuters. “Our cobalt can be traced back to the producer. It hasn’t been produced by child labor.”
What in the actual fuck?
How is Pratima Desai getting away with slipping news stories out on to the Reuters newswire that involve either her friends or paid clients without making disclosures? Why does she give Anthony Milewski stories column inches, even printing disinformation, while he’s cashing out stock and making millions?
The Reuters brains trust needs to ask Pratima for her sources, verify she’s actually engaging in honest journalism, and that she’s not selling access to Reuters to individual companies because it REALLY SEEMS LIKE SHE IS.
Because the Giga Metals story is not just false, it appears to be deliberately so, written to work around the fact, and has cost retail investors millions of dollars that appear to have gone into the pocket of company insiders. If nothing else, this leaves Reuters in a legally precarious position, with class action lawsuit potential.
Oh, you’ll enjoy the punchline to this dirty little episode in smallcap market manipulation, posted yesterday:
GIGA METALS ADDS TO WORKING CAPITAL
Due to the exercise of various warrants and options, $3,190,158 in new capital has come into the treasury of Giga Metals Corp. over the past two weeks. The working capital of the company is approximately $4,057,500 as of today’s date.
Whatever Pratima was paid for her time, reputation, and access, it was absolutely worth it to whoever paid her.
And I think we know who paid her.
Side note: News out today from Conic Resources (NKL.V):
Conic Metals Corp. has added $6.9-million of cash to its balance sheet by, after approval of its independent board members, monetizing the 3.98 million shares that the company owned in Giga Metals Corp.
“Conic has significantly improved its balance sheet with the execution of this sale,” stated Justin Cochrane, Conic’s president and chief executive officer.
- Conic’s Chairman is Anthony Milewski.
- Conic’s Executive VP in charge of Strategy is Martin Vydra.
Haul these motherfuckers in, regulators. Show the market that someone is paying attention beyond me.
UPDATE: Reuters tells me they’re looking into the story.
UPDATE: A Reuters spokesperson tells me, “We have not seen any facts that contradict our story. We stand by our reporter and our reporting.”
I mean…
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: No commercial connection to any company or person mentioned.
I was conned by this news article and want to be part of the class action law suit please.
I was conned as well and would like to be part of the class action lawsuit.
Management and pratima desai should be out of the job and behind the jail. Never expected jarnalism profession could be so cheap .
Thank you for publishing this.
I have contacted the Canadian Securities Administrators and asked them to investigate this potentially fraudulent trading activity by the Board of Giga.
Directly before being involved with Giga ( only in 2019), Milewski made an extremely bad deal for many Cobalt 27 retail shareholders too. He sold Cobalt 27 to Pala when the company was at all time lows. Milewski had been, (or even still was) affiliated with Pala. Not only was the cash portion of the deal very low (shareholders originally rejected the first cash offer), as part of the deal, Conic Metals was created. Milewski completely over-inflated the likely value of the Conic metals spin off which misguided shareholders support for the deal. The quoted value of Conic by Milewski was $1.92. It’s first day of trade was 39 cents. It’s highest since being listed has been 45 cents.
These are all facts, I encourage you to look them up to confirm.
Milewski may be growing extremely rich, but his reputation for taking advantage of retail investors is now firmly established.
It’s a real shame because Giga does have a fantastic resource and economics and thus has great medium to long term prospects. And CEO Mark Jarvis did not cash in. He’s in it for the long haul. Likewise, Long term investors, those in long before Milewski’s pillaging, are also undeterred by this very suspicious insider trading. The original thesis remains, it’s a good long term project.
I think it’s also clear Milewski is soon to be out as Chairman of the Board, and I would say director. This is good news for the company. He only has 500,000 shares left. His appointment as director, and then to Chairman was based on this stockholdings, he had apx 7% of the company. He doesn’t have any special skills except for being known as a ‘finance wizard’ capable of pulling off a deal which no else could see. Going forward, the company needs ‘big name’ operational mining experts on the Board.
At 500,000 shares, Milewski can no longer personally profit (much more) from the company growing, and thus his interests are no longer aligned with the company. Milewski forced his way into the company, when it was dirt cheap, in order to do what he did last week. This was the plan (imo). It was not to see the company through to production. Milewski operates in short time frames. As much money as possible in as short a time as possible by any means necessary.
I also think there is a possibility that Milewski was going to lose his position on the Board anyway. Either his use to the company is finished (he’s done his bit) and/or that he has already found his next opportunity and he pulled off this stunt and monetized his position in order to move on to his next play. If he can x10 his money in the next 12-18 months (like he did with Cobalt 27 and now Giga) , why wait with Giga for the next 3-4 years? His opportunity cost of staying with Giga is actually high, given his unique capacity for making money via ‘financial wizardry’ i.e. – ‘retail investor exploitation’.
For the long term investor, Giga has future potential regardless of the recent Board pillaging, and regardless of a imminent supply deal with Tesla. It’s a late stage exploration company. It needs a PFS, a DFS, it needs a long stretch of road to the mine, it needs hydro power connected to the mine, the mine needs to be built, the processing mill. It’s a long way away.
Though, If Giga actually gets into production, and achieve it’s calculated NPV, at current shares outstanding and assuming future dilution, its share price will positively re-rate, to put it modestly. Though don’t be a fool and take my word for it. Assume I’m making this up and I mean you harm. Do a little homework, read the company reports for yourself and get out the calculator.
Hello,
I would like add some additional point:
1) Isn’t Anthony Milewski which owned the 7% but Conic Metals Corp. The sell of the shares have been added to the cash of the Company.
2) the membership of Anthony Milewski into the board wasn’t due to the 7% but to an agreement when Cobalt 27 invest in 1 million and then this right to Conic.
See links below to verify:
1) Both Milewski the individual, and his company Conic Metals (which consists of a handful of people ) owned Giga Shares. As of August 17th 2020 Milewski the individual had 6% of Giga (excluding unexercised options) and Conic Metals owned 6.9 % (again, excluding any unexercised securities).
Both were sold en mass last week. Milewski has been personally enriched, AND his proxy Conic Metals has increased it’s cash balance.
At 13%, Milewski actually had more shares/votes than Mark Jarvis at apx. 9-10%.
2) The link below also makes clear, certainly his appointment to Chairman of the Board in August 2020 was based on his stockholdings. Keep in mind those with the most shares and votes can elect themselves into position. This is a tiny company after all.
His initial appointment to a director of the board in April 2019 does seem to reflect Cobalt 27 financing of Giga which I’ve described below, however, no doubts his shares still had something to do with his appointment.
The deal between Cobalt 27 & Giga is outlined in the 2nd link (company announcement). The deal was worth a total of almost 13 million at the time (July 2018). For a future 2% of production of nickel Cobalt 27 paid Giga 1 million in cash and issued 1,125,000 shares of Cobalt 27 at $10.50. From here, Cobalt 27 shares plummeted, reaching a low of $3.50. By October 2019 Cobalt 27 was sold to Pala for $4, And Conic was created, which came to be worth apx. 40 cents and under. Giga could only have lost money by taking on Cobalt shares – as much as a 50% loss.
This makes me wonder about bad blood/conflict between Milewski and Jarvis.
Either Conic, or before it Cobalt 27 had purchased Giga stock (no doubt via private placement), and Milewski had purchased Giga stock (again, no doubt private place) and awarded options on appointment as director.
Some things to consider:
-Milewski had accumulated more power than the long serving Mark Jarvis in shares/voting rights.
-Milewski’s Cobalt 27 deal Giga went bad. Giga lost money here.
-Milewski having accumulated shares can of course appoint himself in positions on the Board, which can be said of his appointment has Chairman,
-The Board approves options/warrants to themselves and affiliated companies, not to mention private placements.
-After last week’s stunt Milewski no longer has power at Giga Metals. He’s out at the next vote.
-Going forward it was very important that someone like Milewski did not have 13% of the company. I believe Jarvis was not happy about Milewski’s power in Giga.
-With the corporate raiders gone, there is room now for new majority shareholders with a long term vision and integrity, and a brand new board to reflect this, one which is on the same team as Jarvis.
See link below to verify information.
https://www.gigametals.com/news/anthony-milewski-becomes-chair-of-giga-board-lyle-davis-steps-down-but-remains-as-director/
https://www.gigametals.com/news/giga-metals-sells-royalty-on-turnagain-nickel-cobalt-project/
Thanks for the additional information.
Thank you very much for the great journalism! I hope the people involved get the justice they deserve.
jail time
This story is a community asset and you should get a medal for researching and publicizing this. We are overwhelmed by publicly disseminated lies and very few folks do the hard work to share the truth. Thank you and YES – please send this to the OSC and all other regulators to do their F’ing jobs and protect the public from fraudulent stock promotion. It’s musical chairs and some sucker gets stuck with inflated, worthless shares.
Thanks for publishing this.. I recently invested money basis this fraudulent news and feel cheated now. I will report this to CSA first thing on Monday and take all possible actions to get my hard earned money back from these scammers.
Its very clear I was scammed by this article and company as well. I was previously in a group with people planning on taking legal action but it was shut down by the site.
What are my next steps ? as I already filed to the securities exchange….
It is baffling that, well over a year later, absolutely nothing has become of this. Anthony Milewski continues to participate in the equity markets as normal. Reuters offered no explanation for the behavior of their employee. I have been reading the social media of a few people involved in financial crimes forensics, and it is wild how bad the Canadian markets are – all brazen, in daylight, on a regular basis.
I hope something changes soon and all I can do is encourage people to email government officials and demand the regulators in Canada be at least examined, citing stories like this and emphasizing the countless, mostly middle and lower class victims (For all of us, but also for LA beast, who once blocked us both on Twitter because it was apparently more difficult for him to stomach the reality of Giga Metals than a bottle of 40-year-old Pepsi).