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Mainichi: Saruhashi dumped his Nova shares by September 30; Nishida: I arranged the Nova equity warrant sale; Saruhashi: I’ve never heard of Nishida

There has been some speculation going on as to how former Nova President Nozomu Saruhashi was reported to hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of the firm’s shares by last Friday. As anyone following the Nova case knows, Saruhashi, along with holding company Nova Kikaku, was always assumed to be the majority holder of Nova’s shares.

He was. The Bloomberg box told us that Nova’s top shareholders were as follows:

1. Nova Kikaku 35.94%
2. Saruhashi, Nozomu 35.47%
3. Roots 11.82%
4. Saruhashi, Hikaru 3.83%
5. Saruhashi, Izumi 1.93%

We’re forced to wonder how and when Saruhashi cashed out, and whether or not it was legal. First of all, according to a notification from the Financial Services Agency in March, any transaction involving a purchase or sale of 5% of a listed firm must be reported on EdiNET (Electronic Disclosure for Investors’ NETwork).

Nova’s code at EditNET is 941240. As of this morning, no sale from Saruhashi has been reported.

So…when were the shares sold? According to today’s Mainichi:

It has emerged that the stake held by NOVA Kikaku and Sahashi had declined to 3.69 percent and 16.02 percent, respectively, by Sept. 30, totaling 19.71 percent. Neither Sahashi nor NOVA Kikaku has submitted a report on the sale of the shares.

Emphasis added. There’s not much of a point in even checking EditNET or Bloomberg. The sale was not reported within five days. According to the FSA’s document from March, failure to properly disclose any transaction involving greater than 5% of a listed firm is a violation of the Securities and Exchange Law.

Also according to the Mainichi: Arrested stock price manipulator Haruo Nishida told the paper on October 11 that he was involved with setting up the sale of Nova’s equity warrants, saying, “I helped set them up. I was just about to do it (get involved with NOVA shares) and was heading off to Britain (in connection with that), but the Osaka district prosecutors stopped me, so I couldn’t go.”

So, the Mainichi sat on this info for 18 days?

Perhaps they couldn’t verify it. After all, last Thursday, Saruhashi told the Mainichi, “I’ve never heard of Nishida, nor have I met him. A lawyer was dealing with the funds and I’ve heard the lawyer has had nothing to do with him, either.”

Note: EdiNET of course has a frustratingly stupid user interface and does not properly process GET variables from an HTML form.

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