Elaine Stead tops up her Blue Sky shares

The parade of big shots at Blue Sky Alternative Investments taking advantage of the share price plunge to top up their holdings continues apace.

Elaine Stead of Blue Sky Venture Capital. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

STEADY ON

The parade of big shots at Blue Sky Alternative Investments taking advantage of the share price plunge to top up their holdings continues apace.

The latest to join in is Elaine Stead, who heads up the venture capital arm of the embattled Brisbane fund manager, which has struggled to neutralise an assault by US short seller Glaucus Research Group.

It emerged on Monday that Stead had picked up 8777 shares on Friday for $50,000. That adds to her existing pile of 18,885, along with 450,000 options.

Boss Rob Shand, chairman John Kain and board members Phil Hennessy and Michael Gordon bought similarly small amounts last week in a seemingly coordinated show of token support for the firm.

SPINSTER BAD COP

Stead, a former stem cell biologist who joined Blue Sky in 2013, had been quite chatty on Twitter until recently when she switched per profile to private.

Describing herself as a “scientist, entrepreneur, spinster, bad cop,’’ she added at one point “can’t sleep’’ and “wolf is always at her door’’ to her Twitter bio.

That’s understandable in the pressure cooker situation of late.

It also might explain Stead’s needy tweets, with one admitting that she could use a hug and another that she was feeling “low in professional confidence right now’’.

Adding to the intensity has been a curious bit of interaction with John Hempton, a titan in the short selling sphere who has now shorted Blue Sky.

Hempton bombarded Stead with private Twitter messages offering advice about how to proceed but she didn’t appreciate the over-the-top overture.

The onslaught continued on Monday, with Hempton openly tweeting: “Elaine should get her own lawyer independent of the company. I recommended that for her own welfare. By not doing that Elaine is destroying her life. Kudos.’’

SLINGS AND ARROWS

Meanwhile, Blue Sky has continued to defend its business model without directly rebutting the specifics of Glaucus allegations that it has misled the market.

In a savage critique released March 28, Glaucus claimed Blue Sky has inflated its asset values and fund performance while hiding behind a veil of secrecy and overcharging investors.

But in a letter to investors released yesterday, Shand didn’t address these withering criticisms in any detail.

Instead, he dismissed the Glaucus attack as merely a “distraction’’ and said the business has a strong balance sheet and is “in very good shape’’.

The only admission of error focused on style, not substance. Shand acknowledged his firm “must better communicate to the market what we do and how we do it’’.

Blue Sky shares, which traded at $11.43 before Glaucus went nuclear, crashed to $5.62 last Thursday but continued recovering yesterday. It closed at $5.75, up a meagre 5 cents.

Spare a thought for Adcock Private Equity, which splashed out $2 million on shares last month and then dumped the bulk of their holdings last week. Ouch.

BYGONE AGE

It might by a relic of a bygone age but there remains a legal requirement for the boss of Suncorp to live in Queensland.

So City Beat found it rather interesting when a recent scan of the electoral roll revealed that Suncorp chief Michael Cameron is registered in NSW. Specifically, he’s got a spread at Dawes Point.

Asked about the discrepancy, a spin doctor for the banking and insurance colossus assured us that the matter will be addressed.

“Michael’s ASIC registration reflects the address of his Brisbane home. He is going to update his electoral roll details to be consistent with this,’’ he told us.

Cameron is not alone in this department. The electoral roll shows his counterpart at Bank of Queensland, Jon Sutton, lives in Sydney too but he maintains most of his time is spent in Brisbane.