Amonil's insolvency prospects no deterrent for speculators

The insolvency looming over the Amonil Slobozia chemical plant for a few weeks now, has not chased the speculators away, who have been conducting transactions with the company on the Stock Exchange, so that its shares are among the most traded on the market in terms of volume.
Amonil’s shares are much more volatile than the capital market average, despite the fact that next week the company could go insolvent for failing to pay an almost 59 million RON debt. Since the beginning of the year until now its shares have gone up by about 86%. The trend was really hectic, with shares moving from a low of 0.0091 RON in February to 0.0336 RON in May, that is a 270% growth in three months, after which they fell again to 0.02 RON/share, only to gain again 30%, even though the company is one step away from being subjected to compulsory execution for 14 million euro debts.
Almost 800 million shares were transferred in 2009, accounting for 72% of the total number of shares. The identity of the people who are taking the shares up and down by 15% and trade stakes of millions of Amonil shares almost every day is not known.
At the end of 2007, businessman Ioan Niculae, owner of the Interagro group announced he had taken over the management of the chemical fertiliser plant Amonil, which he planned to integrate with the other chemical plants that he controlled to form a group he intended to float on the London Stock Exchange.
Meanwhile, the fertiliser market has collapsed, Niculae is no longer an Amonil shareholder and the company has turned into a ghost stock that became the object of a stubborn speculation by a group of Stock Exchange investors even though it frequently halts production and is one step away from compulsory execution.