Tricom Equities yesterday clarified a couple of details amid the market and media rumour storm connected to the group's surge in margin calls and its failure to settle stock market trades at the beginning of this week.
Tricom said in a media statement yesterday morning that it currently operates an equity finance book of approximately $950 million that is secured against approximately $1.3 billion of equity collateral, and more or less confirming the estimate published yesterday in The Australian. The firm reiterated that it "has been a net receiver of funds".
The firm also said that the failure, or "delay", in settlement on Tuesday was "because Tricom's stock lender failed to deliver the stock".
There's a lot of complexity behind the issues of stock lending, margin lending practices (by Tricom as a lender and by Tricom as a borrower from banks).
Amongst the army of rapidly developing media commentators on this boutique broking firm,
Business Spectator, in a couple of columns yesterday, may have best explained the most salient issues.
Columnist Alan Kohler noted that Tricom's margin loan contracts confer beneficial ownership of the shares onto Tricom. It is not acting as trustee and does not have a first mortgage, as is most common in margin lending arrangements.
This means that payments by Tricom's clients under margin calls to the firm - as has happened extensively over the last week or two - amount to unsecured exposures by clients to Tricom rather than clarifying ownership by the clients of "their" shares in the event the broking firm were to turn out to be in financial strife, which is what plenty of counterparties assumed on Tuesday, due to the failure to settle that day.
The Australian reported today that the firm's three main lenders - ANZ, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse - had two representatives working from the office of Tricom in Sydney to monitor margin loans.
Tricom managing director Lance Rosenberg told ABC Radio that "in my judgement no one will lose their money … We fully intend to be in business. We fully intend to rebuild from the reputational damage that we've clearly been suffering … We're open and we're trading."