On Feb 17, JMEI Management (the Party) (led by Leo Ou Chen, CHINA) announced the "going-private" proposal to shareholders to acquire all shares not owned by the Party at 7.00 $ per share, and the Management had the company’s shares listed in the NYSE at 22 $ per share only two years ago.
The Management has been intentionally manipulating the prices of the security in the 3-4 months before the announcement, in collaboration with the party's associates to as low as 4.90 $ in the one week before the go-private offer, and taking advantage of the price collapse to "timely" announce the buy-back go-private proposal.
Key evidence of price manipulations: 1) The Management had announced the buy-back of shares of 100 millions $ in the open markets last year, but never took actions to buy-back shares in the open markets to support share prices, thus misleading investors about the management’s intention to remain to be listed in the US Markets, and intentionally to let the share prices to fall as low as possible so as to propose a low price go-private proposal. 2) The Company has been profitable every quarter since going public, but suddenly announced losses in the last Quarter's earnings report, resulting in substantial collapse of share prices in the 3 months before the go-private proposal. The Management did not conduct buy-back shares, or take measures to support share prices. In connection to the recently announced go-private proposal before this Quarter's earning announcement, it is clear that the Management mostly likely has committed accounting frauds to intentionally cause share collapses so as to make a low-ball offer.