Press Quotes

While most UK investors are unlikely to be familiar with [Asensio's] work they might be aware of its results.

Since April, a nonprofit group associated with another high-profile investor, Manuel P. Asensio, has written five letters criticizing the for-profit education industry and calling for tighter regulation to congressmen and regulators with jurisdiction over the sector.

[A] famed short seller Manuel P. Asensio’s new nonprofit group has written to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, asking him to investigate the business practices of a for-profit education company. … “Without the scam on the DOE, for-profits would not exist,” Asensio said in an interview. “It’s the worst product at the highest price.” He said the for-profits get the least-educated people, “who are most susceptible and are least capable of analyzing what they’re buying, to get on board….We don’t see any redeeming value for the for-profit education stocks. There’s no reason for them to exist."

Shares of China Sky One Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSKI) are under pressure today which could be related to reports late last week from Asensio.com that eight products manufactured by the company appear in a Chinese government notice of "counterfeit drug products."

Timminco Ltd.'s spectacular fall from grace continued yesterday....Manuel Asensio, a New York-based fund manager....publicly criticized the company.

Manuel Asensio doesn't bet often. But when he does, it's wise to pay attention.

Manuel Asensio is "a veteran short-seller, whose Asensio & Co has identified dozens of cases of corproate fraud and profited by selling their shares short."

In a response to former SEC Commissioner Roel Campos stating that there ought to be a certain level of short selling regulation, New York hedge fund manager and activist short seller Manuel Asensio responded on Bloomberg-TV: "There should be no reason to borrow stock," referring to the requirement that one should borrow stock that they sell short.

I should credit Manuel Asensio and his book Sold Short for opening my eyes to the story at Zonagen. Manuel is a notable short-seller who issued a flurry of negative reports on Zonagen as its stock fell from a climax of more than $40 per share down to under a buck.

At least one other market participant, Manuel Asensio, a noted short seller, continues to remain skeptical. In a note, he said that Timminco "is a corporate governance and fair disclosure case. This is not a new-technology or emerging-markets case," he declared, adding that he is "not short TIM."

Known as a prominent short seller, Asensio now runs a long/short equity hedge fund, which takes both positive and bearish bets. Asensio can't increase short positions on financial-services shares, so he said he may have to sell some long positions to hedge against broader declines in the stock market.

Asensio’s LDK reports “have hardly tempered their scornful tone.”

Another notable short-seller who does his homework is Manuel Asensio. Asensio publicizes some of his research as an aspect of his business model… the research also serves a public interest, throwing light on various unsavory stock promotions and bogus or exaggerated management claims.

Asensio helped define "activist investor."

“The shorts I know, on the other hand, perhaps because they’re often falsely accused of spreading “rumor and innuendo”, bend over backwards to be open and factual. Think Bill Ackman on Farmer Mac and MBIA, Manuel Asensio (who has his own web site, www.asensio.com), Jim Chanos”

Diatribes against Mr. Asensio often overlook the quality of his research and his rather impressive record in sniffing out overvalued companies.

This is not a game for the meek as targeted companies tend to come after such analysts with a vengeance. In one particularly heated litigation, Hemispherx Biopharma responded to claims that its highly touted drug Ampligen was worthless - causing the company's stock price to plummet and enriching the short selling counter-analyst Manuel Asensio - by suing Asensio for defamation, seeking the $80 million in the drop in trial has been ordered. Since 1998, Asensio has attacked 28 companies for advancing poor drugs based on poor studies and some of the companies have been forced into bankruptcy or delisted from the stock exchanges following his charges. He has claimed his annual earnings are roughly $6 million per year. L. Stuart Ditzen. Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine July 14, 2002

Pegasus's 86% price decline "coincides with the publication of 11 negative research notes from July through August by well-known short-seller Manuel Asensio."

One of Wall Street's best known short sellers, Manuel Asensio, spotted Pegasus' ties to an accused Taiwanese super-embezzler...

“Among the biggest skeptics was Manuel P. Asensio, a money manager who sold Solv-Ex stock short. A short sale is a bet by an investor that the value of a stock will fall. Asensio told a Canadian newspaper that Solv-Ex 'was perhaps the greatest blizzard of way-over-the-top pumpery I have ever witnessed.'"

Winthrop Quigley, Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico)

Manuel Asensio, one of the most outspoken and controversial short sellers, has scaled back in recent years and is now investing on both the long and short side. Asensio generated annual returns of more than 30% from 1996 to 2003 by aggressively shorting shares of companies including Diana Corp., Winstar Communications Inc. and Turbodyne Technologies Inc. (TRBD 0.00, +0.00, +16.67%) . Diana and Winstar are now bankrupt.

An interview with Manuel Asensio quickly reveals a manager with a strong, independent mindset…..Asensio’s style was amongst the most aggressive of short sellers in recent history. This certainly required a great amount of resolve, which was undoubtedly forged and strengthened by the great deal of research he did on each company that he shorted.

Winstar [...] failed to make an interest payment on some debt, shortly before it fell into bankruptcy, as Asensio predicted.

Charles Gasparino
 Blood on the Street

Asensio has a remarkedly strong record in picking shorts. [....] For that talent, one company has called him 'one of the world's best-known short sellers.'

On Thursday, Asensio & Company, an investment firm, faxed a letter to Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, charging that misuse of the nano label has become a favorite tactic for fraudulent stock promotion.

Manuel Asensio... is not shy in critiquing stocks he rates overpriced.

Manuel Asensio, another well known short-seller, wrote a book a couple of years ago titled Sold Short in which he relates many episodes in which his quest to make money on the short side uncovered stock fraud and other brands of corporate mischief.

Asensio is despised in boardrooms for his Dick Tracy snooping and bullhorn denunciations of businesses he believes are frauds.  A short seller with a long list of corporate scalps to his name, Asensio was burning shoe leather in Port St. Lucie as part of a campaign to prove that PolyMedica, the nation's largest provider of diabetes home-testing kits, is a Medicare abuser.

Everyone agrees [Asensio] gets results.

Asensio is widely known on Wall Street as a "short seller," an investor who makes money as the result of a company's financial distress.

[Asensio] borrows lots of stock and sells it high. When the price falls, he buys the stock back, returns it to the owner and counts his winnings. Most of those stocks have plummeted. Several companies have gone bankrupt or been delisted.

Research Frontiers continues to battle with a vocal investor group that is working to drive down the stock price. Earlier this month, Manuel Asensio, chief executive of Asensio & Co., sent a letter to Research Frontiers' board of directors taking the company to task.

Even following the recent [92%] decline in VeriSign's stock price, famed short-seller Manuel Asensio isn't declaring victory. The New York investor continues to have a short position [...]

Asensio’s zest for battle really sets him apart.

Asensio has produced perhaps the best public record of stock calls in the business.

Asensio provides sound economic arguments for loosening the regulatory constraints on short selling...

So when will individual investors wise up […] when they start paying attention to people like Asensio.

Asensio gave us “the story of Peter Young, an Oxford University graduate with a degee in math and annual salary and bonuses over US$450,000 who,having dabbled in shares of a firm called Solv-Ex throgh some shady European accounts was charged with numerous offenses by the U.K.'s Serious Frauds Office, then showed up in court in drag complete with pink handbag and lipstick.”

Manuel Asensio is every investor's best friend [...] his firm scours the investment world [...] in the process, Asensio has uncovered numerous cases of outright fraud.

“And what a publicity machine it is. At first glance, reviewing the press releases at the company's website, you might think Research Frontiers is a hotbed of technological wonder. Asensio provides intriguing evidence that there's less than meets the eye. Asensio went farther in a prepared statement.”

Don’t sell this short-seller short.

For the better part of the past decade [Asensio's] made his living by taking a contrarian stance on stocks that everyone else seems to love.

Love him or hate him -- and he is widely reviled by many stockholders of the companies he targets --Asensio's book is well worth reading.

Manuel Asensio is on the warpath. One of the leading short sellers on Wall Street, he's on the phone calling lawyers, editors, public officials--anyone who will listen--to his complaint about VeriSign. . . The issue is pretty obscure and Asensio is a stock trader, not a bureaucrat, so why does he care? He has a short position.

Anyone who was silly enough to follow [Jack] Grubman's advice didn't get to stay in never-never land for long. In early March outspoken short-seller Manuel Asensio released the first in a series of devastating reports saying that Winstar's common stockholders had a "far greater probability of losing their entire investment than they realize." …"Winstar is like a Broadway sketch," says Asensio, who dismisses the analysts as "idiots." …The response from the analyst camp? Buy! Salomon and CSFB, Winstar's bankers on its high-yield deal, were the company's most vociferous defenders. "There are not serious default concerns on [Winstar's] bonds," said Grubman on March 8. He characterized Asensio's report as "incomplete, inaccurate, or inconsistent with our analysis." …. [On April 18] Winstar announced that it was filing for bankruptcy.

Along with other journalists, I have made use of Asensio's materials, though not without checking it first. When I did, it turned out to be quite reliable.

Jack Grubman dismissed the work of Asensio, a well-known shortseller who predicted, almost to the day, Winstar's demise, as someone who 'lacks an understanding of the CLEC industry.' Asensio, it turns out, understood this industry far better than Grubman.

Asensio is a cult figure among some investors....his unmatched six-year record for spotting over hyped and fraudulent stocks, makes him very unpopular on Wall Street.

Manuel Asensio is a prominent short seller who has prospered by targeting companies that he believes are misrepresenting their businesses to investors.

[Asensio] concluded with a prediction that Turbodyne stock would fall below $1 a share. [It fell to a $0.01 low.]

Playing a pivotal role in the downfall of Turbodyne was the well-known New York short trader Manuel Asensio, who released a bluntly worded report...

Well-known hedge fund manager Manuel Asensio, who runs Asensio & Co., claims that WinStar's network is inferior to its competitors' and that its management is too promotional. He snorts "So what?" when WinStar hypes that it owns the largest share of licenses in the 38-gigahertz frequency.

Asensio casts a long shadow on Wall Street [...] there is little question that Mr. Asensio is intent on his work.

Manuel Asensio and his team of analysts have made it to their passion to detect fraud in the securities market

Few doubt that Asensio is battle tested.

Asensio's record for spotting dubious and overpriced enterprises is simply unmatched ...

Short-sellers play a valuable role in the market....certainly the record of Manuel Asensio, perhaps the most notorious of short-sellers, testifies to that.

The current uproar over the Dreyfus manager erupted when Manuel Asensio, a New York investor who specializes in short selling, accused Dreyfus of [....] wrongful utilization of investors' money.

The hottest bear to date: Asensio….BioTime is down 55% since January.

Mr. Asensio warned in a September article in this newspaper that ErgoBilt faced problems. He views “it as a terminal short,” meaning he believes that stock will soon be worth nothing. (ErgoBilt stock soon became worthless.)

The controversy over Mr. Asensio is reigniting the debate over short-selling and the role it plays in the stock market, a debate that stretches back to Jesse Livermore, the "stock operator" who shook the markets early in [the 20th] century.

Manuel Asensio, a New York short-seller [...] is taking on the granddaddy of stock buyers: Fidelity Investments.

[Asensio is] No poster boy for subtlety

Despite signing a lucrative marketing deal with a major pharmaceutical company, Zonagen has seen its stock price tumble 25% over the last two weeks after receiving a negative report from a short seller [Asensio].

The people at Schering-Plough have forgotten more about drug development and regulatory strategy that this guy Asensio will ever know. [Schering failed to get Vasomax approved and lost its entire investment.]

Asensio’s work is well-reputed.

[Asensio] has gained prominence for his public war of words with Diana Corp.-- a war that he has clearly won, with Diana’s shares plummeting 97% over the 12 months.

At bottom, what gives shorts an edge is sheer shoe leather. ``Shoe leather'' might well be Manuel Asensio's middle name.

at bottom, what gives shorts an edge is sheer shoe leather. "Shoe leather" might well be Manuel Asensio's middle name.

businessweek.com

Diana has gone from a red-hot stock to little more than all the nasty things Asensio said the company was when he made a multi-million-dollar bet against it.

Instead of playing the game with his cards to his chest, [Asensio] finds flagrant instances of overvaluation and lays his cards out of the table when the betting is at its peak.

[Asensio] infuriates company management, particularly where Asensio has determined that the company’s products do not work