Monkey Business at Bradford and Bungle continues .... ....

Bradford and Bingley have issued 2 Price Monitoring Extensions today

05 August 2008 A Price Monitoring Extension has been activated in this security. A Price Monitoring Extension is activated when the auction matching process would result in an auction price that is a pre-determined percentage above or below the base price. The auction call period is extended for 5 minutes.

For details of how base prices are set for each market, please refer to the Guide to Trading Service at http://www.londonstockexchange.com/

The LSE Glossary provides this explanation

Price monitoring extension
A time extension to the auction call period. It occurs if the auction match price breaches price tolerance limits. The extension allows further entry and deletion of orders.

Such Extensions were also made on the 25th July and the 28th July.

They indicate that traders have seen unexpected price movements which they require to examine and the ability to rectify trades.

The reason Bradford & Bungle (and any other LSE quoted company so affected) issue these notes is to alert stockholders to unusual activity in share trading. The shares have moved up steadily during the day ending up 2 pence = 3.74%.

Out there, are the demutualised building society's 900,000 investors who picked up their stock as 250-share windfalls that are now worth less than £125 after plunging nearly 90% in the past year.

There are however some heavy hitting shareholders like Marshall Wace LLP , Barclays Capital funds, hedge fund warriors fighting for the carrion when B&B is bought out by Tesco, Bank Santander, who knows ? With a current Market Capitalisation of about £800 Mn B&B would now be a tasty morsel.

Meanwhile the FSA sits and watches as a supposedly regulated market place is rigged and manipulated leaving those small shareholders in Yorkshire out in the cold.