Australian miner Whitehaven Coal hit by hoax

7th Jan 2013. Shares in Aus­tralian min­er White­haven Coal fell almost 9% after a fake press release claimed one of the fir­m’s lenders had with­drawn fund­ing.

The release, from an anti-coal action group claim­ing that ANZ bank had with­drawn A$1.2bn ($1.3bn; £784m), prompt­ed the min­er to sus­pend trad­ing in its shares.

Once the hoax was uncov­ered, White­haven shares recov­ered the loss­es.

Oth­er Aus­tralian firms have fall­en vic­tim to hoax­es in recent months.

The state­ment said that ANZ had with­drawn fund­ing for White­haven’s pro­posed Maules Creek mine due to “rep­u­ta­tion­al risks and analy­sis of the returns on this mine in the cur­rent cli­mate of high volatil­i­ty in the coal export mar­ket”.

Investors then sold shares in the com­pa­ny, fear­ing that the mine may be pulled.

Once the hoax came to light, ANZ issued its own release say­ing it had made no state­ment on White­haven and remained “ful­ly sup­port­ive” of the com­pa­ny.

Jonathan Moy­lan from Front­line Action for Coal, which issued the hoax state­ment, said envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns had prompt­ed the press release.

For more info on Front­line Action for Coal and their con­tin­u­ing protest camp and actions, see here