Well, h-man, I am generally very skeptical of conspiracy...

Well, h-man, I am generally very skeptical of conspiracy theories. But the timing of negative A2M articles and just the complete irrelevance of such a speculative article so far from the potential event, doesn't leave too many logical options for the source or purpose.

I can't recall ever seeing an angle like this story in any financial media before: 'The CEO said she might sell some shares in the future'. I have seen plenty of articles postulating that a founder with a large holding may offload or is looking to offload shares, but never a non-founding CEO or director with relatively minor holdings.

Not sure if the NZ Herald is even required to declare conflict of interest, either at journo or company level. I've never seen one.

I personally don't care too much as a long term holder, unless they publish something which damages the brand which I wouldn't put past them. A2M would no doubt take legal action in such a case.

I think you will find that drop in SP will be short term this morning, just allows a few more shorts to get out and keep a lid on SP maybe for another week or so helping more borrowed shares to be bought back from retail investors and dumb ETF bots.