The National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) is working on several fronts to resolve the Grifols file after the attack on the company launched by Gotham City Research at the beginning of January. During the press conference to present this year's activities, the president of the supervisor, Rodrigo Buenaventura, announced that additional information has been requested from the company and that "in a few weeks" the analysis of what happened will be completed.
"We have had to request some additional clarifications about the first block of information that the company sent us, which we have already received, and we are literally analyzing it now. We just received it a few days ago," said Buenaventura. The organization had made the first information request on January 10, just one day after the Gotham report that doubted Grifols' stock market valuation.
Buenaventura has not given details about the content of the new requirement, although it has specified that it falls within the "first block" of requests, in which the CNMV investigated "the information about the company available to shareholders and investors."
In parallel, the investigation continues to determine whether Gotham has transmitted "misleading information" about Grifols to the market. "On January 23 we already said that we would analyze Gotham's conduct and whether the European standard on the dissemination of misleading information was complied with," although "the priority is the analysis of the company itself," indicated the president of the CNMV.
He has also announced that the supervisor is "in contact with the American counterpart", the US SEC, "for the information that is needed" about Gotham City Research, which is the company that authored the report on Grifols, linked in turn to a bearish investment fund.
The CNMV analyzes Gotham's conduct with regard to the content of its report, the way in which it was disseminated and related market operations.
"We have the firm determination to settle this situation as soon as possible," he said of Grifols and Gotham. "It is a complex issue, it is not a dressing task, it requires time," she added.
Buenaventura has defended the regulation on linked holdings, which in the case of Grifols refers to the relationship between the founding family and the company, and has explained that the CNMV is defending a new rule before the European Commission regarding the short positions of investors. bearish investors.
The supervisor stopped publishing short positions in detail because only Spain and Denmark did so, and that "made the reflection of Spanish companies in the press and public more negative." However, he has called on Brussels to promote a new standard "with aggregated information on all short positions and in a harmonized manner throughout Europe."
The activity of bearish investors is legal, but there is debate about their degree of transparency. These types of opportunistic traders bet that the value of a company will go down. To do this, they borrow shares to sell them at a good price and then, when the time comes to return them, buy them back cheaper, as long as their forecast has been fulfilled.
