(Bloomberg) — Trading in Grupo Elektra shares remained stalled Friday as the company’s billionaire owner Ricardo Salinas Pliego fought to maintain a trading ban on its stock and avoid a slump in its value.
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Pre-market bids on Friday were around 440 pesos per share, or more than 50% below where the stock last traded, after a ban on transactions was briefly lifted today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bolsa Mexicana de Valores imposed a trading ban in July after Salinas accused a creditor of stock fraud. Regulators ordered the exchange to lift the suspension this Friday, even though Elektra said it had won a court order keeping the ban in place. The regulators are yet to be informed of that ruling, the stock exchange said Friday.
Elektra said in a separate filing that the exchange had decided to suspend trading for 20 business days in order to obtain information on the court ruling. The statement did not clarify when that 20-day suspension started. Bourse representatives did not respond to a request for comment to clarify how long a suspension was in place.
Lifting the trading ban “in addition to violating the rule of law, will generate irreparable damage to the company, generating instability and distortion in the markets, causing conditions contrary to the healthy uses and practices of the market and putting all investors at risk,” Elektra said in the statement.
The back-and-forth is the latest in a long saga related to Elektra, which comprises the bulk of Salinas’ more than $10 billion fortune that makes him Mexico’s third richest man, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The suspension was lifted briefly on Oct. 22, but no trading occurred to “avoid transactions that don’t conform to market practices,” the exchange said in a statement on Oct. 23. The exchange can halt trading in shares if prices move more than 15%.
Elektra was cut in August from the country’s benchmark index, setting it up for a steep drop when trading resumes given that a large number of funds that track the index owned the shares.
The stock trading halt was put in place in July at the request of Elektra, as the company warned of a possible fraud. Salinas has since sued a company that lent him $110 million, using 7.2 million Elektra shares as collateral. Salinas’ lawyers have alleged in a UK court that most of those shares were sold to fund the loans, and the rest pocketed by the lender.