Whitehaven Coal: Influencing Market Value via Social Technology

Australian anti-coal activist Jonathan Moylan is alleged to have sat in the forest and used a laptop and mobile phone to temporarily remove more than $314 million from the value of Whitehaven Coal Limited on January 7, 2013 (Shaw 2013;Walsh 2013b,2013c;Williams and Mather 2013). Using a real ANZ Bank statement as a template, Mr. Moylan allegedly created a fake media release to announce that ANZ Bank had reversed a decision to provide a $1.2 billion loan to Whitehaven Coal. He also purchased a website name and a dummy ANZ Bank email address for $25.

When contacted by the media, Mr. Moylan initially posed as a corporate affairs spokesman for the ANZ Bank. The media quickly released this "news," which spread through Twitter, sparking a sudden share sell-off and a drop in Whitehaven Coal's stock price of approximately 8.8 percent before trading could be halted. Mr. Moylan later apologized for lying and justified his actions by saying he wanted to draw attention to the environmental problems that result from open-cut coal mines.

In response to this situation, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) now urge organizations to monitor major sources of news and information on mainstream outlets and significant social technology sites (Price 2012;ASX 2013), while also highlighting that investors should use "common sense and skepticism" (Walsh 2013b) when referring to social technology sources.

After several months of deliberations, Mr. Moylan pleaded guilty to making a false and misleading statement under Australia's Corporations Act (Low 2013a,2013b;Walsh 2013c;Shanahan 2014).Figure 2provides a timeline of events for this case.

Figure 2: Timeline for Case 2 Whitehaven Coal: Influencing Market Value