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Business Daily

Short Stories: The CEO

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4816 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What’s it like to be on the wrong side of a big short? Former CEO Paul Pittman's company was shorted by an anonymous short seller who made false allegations in order to drive its share price down - way down.

This is the story of how Paul and his firm overcame the short attack that cost them millions: and why it’s not just big companies that stand to lose money from rogue shorters on the markets.

Producer: Ciaran Tracey Presenter: Leanna Byrne

Transcript

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0:00.0

Any society needs heroes.

0:01.9

To have something to believe in.

0:03.6

Something really extraordinary.

0:05.0

Not always just the winner.

0:06.8

Amazing sports stories.

0:08.4

Coming soon to the BBC World Service.

0:10.7

Nothing is ever quite as expected.

0:13.1

Follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode.

0:16.1

Search for amazing sports stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

0:24.2

They say if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

0:29.2

I'm just a huge fan of corn and excited about corn, watching the corn crop grow.

0:34.1

But that's cultural, that's because of the way, it's where I grew up is Illinois,

0:38.0

and it's a corn and soybeans world. I'm Leanna Byrne, and this is Business Daily, where we're in the

0:43.1

second episode of our series on short selling, and where we've just met Paul, Paul Pittman,

0:49.2

a boy from America's original prairie state, but a boy done good. I'm currently executive chairman of farmland partners. I used to be the chairman and chief executive

0:59.0

officer. I founded the company and I've kind of semi-retired, so to speak.

1:03.4

And what we do is we own farmland all across the United States that we rent to family farmers.

1:10.0

As CEO, Paul lived his work, building up his

1:13.7

company, which became big enough to be traded on the US stock exchange. But back in 2018,

1:20.7

so much of that hard work would be undone at the hands of a particular kind of stock trader called an activist shortseller.

1:30.4

That's someone who wants to drive a firm's stock price down by talking loudly about suspected

1:36.8

failings in articles called short reports and selling the company's shares in the hope of making

...

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