In bk, the irs measures change in control by the number of folks who have more than 5% and go under 5% and by the number who have less than 5% and go over - if there is a more than 50% change then you have a change of control - its the reason that a lot of large bk firms request trading restrictions from the judge - see GEGQQ last week - basically the judge rules that 5% owners cannot sell their stock and less than 5% owners cannot buy if the selling or buying would cross them over the threshold. Since 5% of WHAIQ stock runs about 4k, I'm guessing there probably been enough transactions to trigger that for whaiq. I've probably followed 50 bks in the last 3 years - only seen the shell sold in 2. For one the SEC always chimes in against it as trafficking in shells is considered counter to public policy. Plus shell buyers only want shells that have gotten a technical discharge from the court and liquidations, esp. chapter 7s rarely get a discharge and without a discharge creditors can go back after the shell for any unpaid claims - its never an issue absent an attempt to sell the shell becuase in a liquidation the shell is empty if creditors haven't been paid 100%. I suppose if Whaiq did recover enough to pay out to equity though via the lawsuits, the shell could get a discharge, but the mechanism to buy the shell would still be to buy the unissued shares - its the only way to get 90% without driving the price through the roof, and no one wants a shell where they don't have 90% because otherwise you are taking too great a % along for the ride. If a company doesn't have enough unissued to do such a deal and can't increase the authorized number in bk, then the shell just doesn't get sold. I did have a shell last year that come off the Millbrook bankruptcy - creditors got paid in full there plus equity got 47 cents - the shell was then sold for I think 250k but everyone got to keep their shares - though they were diluted by 90% - nevertheless, the empty shell continued to trade and got as high as 30 cents - not sure who was buying an empty shell at that point but I was happy to let them have some of my shares. That shell has now been filled via R/M just last week (though its back to 10 cents now). Still have some shares - mostly just out of a keen interest to see how it goes. This shell was taken over by Trinad Capital who has an impressive record with some of their prior deals like US Wireless and the shell that came out of Eb2b, though I can't remember what that shell was renamed.
