THREAD FYI:
Friday January 29, 5:36 pm Eastern Time
SEC hands down six trading suspensions in one day
By Peter Ramjug
WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Federal securities regulators Friday suspended trading in six public companies, believed to be the largest number of suspensions handed down in a single day in recent memory.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said questions had been raised about the accuracy of public information released by the six, which were all traded on the National Association of Securities Dealers' Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board.
They were Invest Holdings Group Inc. (OTC BB:IVHD - news), Polus Inc. (OTC BB:POLU - news), Electronic Transfer Associates Inc. (OTC BB:ECTS - news), Smartek Inc. (OTC BB:SMEK - news), Citron Inc. (OTC BB:CTRN - news) and USA Talks.com Inc. (OTC BB:USAT - news).
All of the trading suspensions were scheduled to last through Feb. 11, the SEC said.
SEC spokesman John Heine said the total was believed to be the largest number the Wall Street regulatory agency had ruled on in one day in recent times.
As is the commission's custom, he declined comment on whether the SEC was investigating any of them.
The regulator said it suspended trading in Invest, which claims to develop and sell health care products, because of information concerning the efficacy of its products and its business relationship with Internet marketing company Citron.
Invest did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.
A Citron spokesman, William Hazelton, said the company was meeting with its attorneys and would issue a formal statement later.
When asked why Citron's press releases carried the same phone number as three other suspended companies -- Smartek, Electronic Transfer Associates and Polus -- Hazelton said the number was ''for information on the release but it's not the phone number for the company.''
Meanwhile, Smartek, a home rebuilder and wholesale clothier, allegedly lacked ''meaningful,'' publicly available financial information, the SEC said. There had also been questions about information regarding a merger, it added.
USA Talks.com, a La Jolla, Calif., company offering a flat rate ''all you can talk'' long distance service, was suspended because of claims it had made about the status and extent of the company's business operations.
Telephone calls to Smartek and USA Talks.com were not immediately returned.
As Bulletin Board companies, the six were not required to file official documents with the SEC, which regulates the securities markets. But the commission recently approved a rule that would
offer investors better information about stocks traded on the Bulletin Board.
The rule, proposed by NASD, a self-regulatory group, permits only those companies that report their current financial information to the SEC to be quoted on the board.
NASD's electronic OTC Bulletin Board is a quotation service that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices and volume information on about 6,600 OTC securities which are not listed or traded on a national securities exchange.
About half of them do not file financial statements with their regulators, NASD said.
Under the new rule, market makers who deal in the OTC market would not be allowed to quote securities traded on the Bulletin Board unless the company filed periodic reports with the SEC or its exchange regulator.
The new rule was to be phased in over a 12-month period starting in July. By June 2000 the rule was to apply to all companies on the Bulletin Board. |
