https://www.reddit.com/r/VinFastCommunity/comments/15rhx5s/anatomy_of_a_pump_and_dump_game_from_how_lawrence/

How Lawrence Ho and Co set it up

Lawrence Ho and Co set this game up since March 2023 and start reaping some albeit minimal fruits on Aug 10 2023.

He has no interest in helping Black Spade Acquisition Co (BSAQ) public shareholders to make money. His sole intention is to unload his cheaply acquired BSAQ shares under sponsor privilege at a price as high as possible to maximize his profit. Talk about a shady casino guy from Macau.

Dennis Tam, chairman and co-CEO of BSAQ, right-hand man of Lawrence Ho from Ho’s Melco, get acquainted with Pham Nguyen Anh Thu, a director of Vinfast, through a business event in Vietnam in 2015. The two kept contact. On Nov 22, 2021, the two exchanged each other companies info, but at the time, Vinfast was preparing for a direct IPO, working with the like of JPMorgan as underwriter, and not interested in BSAQ merger. BSAQ went on looking for other acquisitions, having talked to over hundred companies but had not found a suitable target (or maybe no one like them). The clock was ticking on July 20 2023 for BSAQ being dissolved if no merger is done and no extension is made. Lawrence Ho and Co. sat on 10.6M shares (Founder shares + warrants) at a cost of $0.6 each, and he wanted to cash out on these shares, knowing that any IPO will earn him huge return.

On March 30, 2023, Dennis Tam reached out to Thu Anh Pham to see if VF was still interested in a merger. Thus, BSAQ fished VF first. VF at the time has failed the traditional IPO, and the clock was also ticking, with mountain of debts. BSAQ aptly knew what VF wants: IPO for stock pumping and boasting. Perhaps, VF is the only one with big scale operation outside the entertainment industry who is willing to do a merger with a SPAC that was founded by casino guy looking on the premise of targeting the gambling and entertainment industry, aka the Casino SPAC, literally. It is a huge hit for VF’s reputation for stooping from the JPMorgan level to a Casino SPAC run by a guy in Macau. But VF was desperate. Dave Mansfield, the CFO, would likely be on the chopping block if the US listing is not done by the end of the year.

From that moment on, hooking VF with the bait it wants, BSAQ management was doing every thing it can to make the combination happen, not driven by finding the best solution for the BSAQ shareholders (if it did, it should negotiate for a third party fair-value evaluation of VF) but by enriching Lawrence Ho and Co as much as possible, thereby agreeing to the ridiculous $23B valuation of VF. The figure can only be thought of as a joke in the US finance industry but they pressed on anyway, for the game.

The two troublesome parties, whom professional investment banks have shunned both, collude together on a scheme to dump shares at pumped-up valuation on retail investors instead. They set up the game and the date.

The pump on Aug 10, 2023

The two parties prepared all the necessary paperwork. They gave the existing BSAQ shareholders a chance to redeem share for cash before the proposed merger voting because it is required to do so by law and by the BSAQ shareholder terms, not out of generosity. 95.3% of existing shareholders redeemed their shares for cash, a huge rebuke to Lawrence Ho and Co, because these are professional finance guys, they clearly know the $23B valuation is a sham and they do not want to participate in Lawrence Ho’s game. Nevertheless, the merger proposal was set up in such a way that even if 95% of shareholders withdraw their money, it cannot be failed, and as expected, the merger proposal got approved with 99.9% approval from the remaining shareholders, of which 80+% are BSAQ management.

The date was set. Aug 10 is the day when BSAQ shareholders voted. The outcome is known in advance for every one who can read SEC filings, because who did not leave would vote yes, guaranteeing a merger success. The stock driver team stands by. Before the actual D-day, the stock driver team try a small scale test run, driving BSAQ from 10 to 12 (20%) and then back down to about 10 on a span of 5 sessions from Jul 28th to Aug 3rd.

Came Aug 10.

The voting happened at around 9:26AM.

Then about 2 hours after that, enough time for the PR Newswire to spread out the news of 99% approval (the 8K filing was not done 2 days later, in which it was revealed that further $15M was withdrawn, but this is not important anyway), at 11:30AM, the BSAQ pump began. BSAQ jumped from $10.55 to as high as $22.7 (100% increase) in just about two and a half hour time-span from 11:30 to 2:00PM, with a volume of 239,567 shares at a total value of approximately $4.2M, before settling on the closing price of $18.5 for the day, for ~70% jump in 1 day.

Usually, and sensibly, a stock goes up hugely if there is some good news, unexpected news, that could drive the earning of the company or improve the company’s business in a significant way.

Does the spike due to some unexpected good news unknown to investors? No. A big No.

The merger is not new news to financial professionals to cause a spike by surprise: the outcome is known in advance before the meeting, as outlined above. It is also not a good news as no big new money was raised.

Since there is no surprise in the merger news and there is no good news, and the general retail investors have not heard much about BSAQ, an obscure ticker among thousand tickers on the market, the “pumping by the news” trick is done by Lawerence Ho and co. They are the single biggest benefactor from this. massively (of course, they engineered it).

Not by other big boys. It is a fact that no institutional investors are interested in the BSAQ / Vinfast stock or currently holds BSAQ because of the very bad Vinfast financial picture coupling with the ridiculous valuation at $23B. Failed direct IPO, failed SPAC PIPE, no investment bankers join the scheme even though they certainly have a front seat to scoop up shares before the listing.