Riding out a short-seller crisis

SHORT sellers have been accused of attacking currencies, causing panic selling, crashing stock markets, and creating financial and economic crises. But, like it or not, they are legitimate players in today's financial system. All the other players (governments, regulators, investors, and companies) need to learn to co-exist with them, and, more importantly, strengthen their fundamentals and put in place a planned response strategy to survive the financial tsunami, if attacked.

In recent times, a few Singapore-listed companies have faced short-seller activism, sparked by unfavourable and damaging reports from whistle-blowing investment research firms, all of whom have names with dama…