I understand the frustration of many of the holders, but it is...

I understand the frustration of many of the holders, but it is worth thinking through the practicalities of a massive sell off of shares right after launch.

They would have a great deal of trouble liquidating all of those shares in one go - or even a large number of them.  You would need a significant numbers of retail buyers and/orinstitutions purchasing them - I do not think there would be many of these lining up to buy a company that had just got out of a long term suspension. 

I reckon if they sold about 20-30 million shares at the current price it would take the share price down to almost nil. I doubt the proceeds would do much to remunerate all the top 20 shareholders for the time, resources and effort that they have put into the business.  They would also still be left with about 1,075,000,000 between them.   

The other thing is that I suspect that they will only be allowed to have the suspension lifted if they can sort out the financial issues that they have.  The ASX and ASIC would be asking a lot of difficult questions - they would have to be satisfied that the exchange really is going to go ahead before they let them do anything.

Then there are all the legal dramas they would have if they did abandon ship - not just here but I suspect also in Singapore and anywhere else they do business.  It would be a nightmare for the directors.

To me it just seems far more likely that they are going to take a shot at the exchange and have issued themselves the shares with the expectation of making a big profit for themselves if it succeeds.  We are likely to see large share sales from the top 20 shareholders as the share price rises, but I think it would be unlikely to be something that they do right after launch.  The exchange would have to be a real thing for it to be worthwhile for them to sell their shares and if they wanted to sell a large number of their holdings they would have to do it in increments over time as the price rises rather than in one hit right at the open.

That's not to say that this is not a high risk investment, it certainly is, with lots of ifs, buts and maybes.  I do not endorse anything other than making up your own mind about what to do with your money.  The share price could indeed crash on open for all I know - they may not relist and the exchange may never launch, but I just think that there is much more of a vested interest in this being a success than being a failure for the directors.