Remember a few months back when Viceroy tried to take down Capitec Bank?

Ja, about that … looks like karma is raining down on them hard.

A new research report on the market analyser published by Intellidex has emerged, and it might be pretty damning.

Commissioned by Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA), to produce a report on short selling activities, Intellidex accuses Viceroy of plagiarising some of its work, including its report on Steinhoff.

Shots fired, indeed.

The scoop from BusinessTech:

Based on its analysis, Intellidex found that Viceroy’s Steinhoff report “was substantially plagiarised from a report produced by hedge fund Portsea Asset Management six months earlier”.

“Viceroy’s contribution of original content to the report appears to be negligible. While the Steinhoff report and related media coverage gave Viceroy considerable influence, in our view this was misplaced given that, according to our research, the Steinhoff report was substantially not its own work,” it said.

Viceroy had released the report two days after the Steinhoff scandal came to light, and sent shares plummeting:

Intellidex has uncovered more dirt in its findings: they reckon that a “significant proportion of the content of Viceroy’s reports” was copied from other sources, particularly funds and short sellers, which are not disclosed in its reports”.

Intellidex’s other findings are also quite spicy: they took Viceroy to town with critiques about their practices and its founder, Fraser Perry (the chap pictured above):

Viceroy has no formal registration with any regulator that could be determined – as it is unregulated, there’s no way to determine how Viceroy monetises its work. as Viceroy is a relative newcomer to short-selling – it appears to mainly generate publicity on companies targeted by other short-sellers, which Intellidex speculates may pay the firm semi-formal gratuities.

Viceroy’s founder, Fraser Perring has a history of dishonesty, having been disbarred as a social worker in the UK. The other two members of Viceroy are 24-year-old Australians – one of whom has a background in corporate restructuring, and the other has no traceable professional background.

Intellidex regards Viceroy’s reports as declining in quality, which could indicate that the views in the reports are not firmly-held beliefs by the writers, but rather presented purely to manipulate markets.

Although Viceroy did respond to Intellidex while the latter was writing up its report, Intellidex makes it clear in their report that Viceroy’s influence is misplaced due to plagiarising other sources.

Having said that, however, Intellidex did deign to leave some kind words for the market analyser:

While we have argued that Viceroy has an unearned influence which it has used to affect prices beyond that justified by its research, it has played a positive role in giving South Africans an opportunity to assess and understand the actions and motives of short sellers. In that respect, Viceroy has done a public service.

It’s amazing how much undercover shady spice is loaded into this innocent-looking observation, don’t you think?

Read the full piece on Intellidex’s report here.

It should be noted that Viceroy hit back with a critique or two of their own:

[source:businesstech]