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Nyrstar NV withdrew a planned vote to dissolve the company from the agenda of its June 30 Annual General Meeting (AGM), a reversal the company says was prompted by a letter from Urion Investments, a Trafigura group company. In this very letter to the board of Nyrstar, Trafigura stated it would abstain from voting on the proposal to dissolve the company. This communication failed to address what appears to be the real reason behind Trafigura’s intervention and the board’s abru

A recent ruling by the ‘Marktenhof’ (Court of Appeal) highlights a critical gap in Belgium’s financial enforcement system. Minority shareholders challenged a decision by the financial watchdog FSMA, but were denied a substantive review. The court held that it lacks jurisdiction to reassess the case on its merits. The outcome raises serious concerns about accountability and judicial oversight in market abuse cases. Palace of Justice of Brussels A controversial FSMA decision In

picture: President Donald Trump (White House, public domain Creative Commons Attribution 3.0-licentie ). While Brussels drafts legislation on strategic autonomy, Europe has already surrendered it on the ground. We speak endlessly about reducing dependence on China for critical minerals, yet we've sold off the very infrastructure needed to process them. The Nyrstar case perfectly illustrates this contradiction. What was presented as a necessary rescue operation in 2019 was, in

Alexander Verbeek explains why Trump wants Greenland. A matter of national security for sure. But the real answer lies beneath the ice: rare earth minerals essential for advanced technology and defence systems. While Arctic mining remains extremely challenging, Nyrstar owns significant off-take rights on one of the largest zinc & critical minerals deposits of the island, the Citronen mine, ready for exploitation and strategically invaluable. In 2019, Trafigura acquired Nyrst

professor Herman Matthijs (UGent, VUB) Zinc mining isn't just about zinc. It's about critical byproduct minerals essential for defense and advanced technology. Europe stood by as Nyrstar, a world-leading European zinc smelter traded in Brussels, fell into the hands of Singapore-based commodity trader Trafigura. A preventable loss with lasting geopolitical consequences. In this video professor Herman Matthijs (UGent, VUB) explains how Europe is losing this strategic race.

The Market Court recently received a petition for the annulment and reform of the decision of the Sanctions Commission of financial watchdog FSMA in the Nyrstar case. The commission had found Nyrstar NV guilty of market manipulation. The company was fined €80,000, but its board members were acquitted. The commission ruled that there had been insufficient investigation into their individual roles in the manipulation. That ruling is now being challenged. The ball is therefore i

The FSMA Sanctions Commission did find misleading practices at Nyrstar and convicted it of market manipulation related to its liquidity position prior to the restructuring. The other allegations, despite having been thoroughly analyzed for four years by the FSMA Auditor, were dismissed two years later, after six years of proceedings, including five days of closed-door hearings, without even consulting the minority shareholders' union that had been working on the case for more

“Together, we can make our societies open for business but closed for crime.” The words of Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever at the United Nations still resonate as I work my way through the 146-page decision of the FSMA Sanctions Committee on market manipulation at Nyrstar NV. The Committee’s mandate was clear: to determine the sanctions for four violations identified by the FSMA’s auditor after years of investigation. His exhaustive reports left little doubt that Nyrstar

Minority shareholders who suffer huge losses are left waiting for years, while courts, despite their best efforts, lack the resources to...

In this short video, Bart De Smet, Chairman of the Corporate Governance Committee, reflects on the independence of board members and the...

The Nyrstar saga continues to make headlines. La Libre follows up on articles published by L'Echo and De Tijd and highlights a striking...

Our years of appealing for transparency in the sour Nyrstar file finally seems to have been heard. In this article by Bert Broens in De Tijd, it is now also explicitly confirmed that the Auditor of the FSMA concludes, after years of investigation, that Nyrstar has misled the market by not communicating transparently. photo © De Tijd For example, no less than 719 million euros in debt were kept hidden from the market. But there is more: our thesis that Trafigura has served its

The imminent introduction of multiple voting rights is currently sparking controversy in the media over whether sufficient consideration...

Listed companies will soon be able to introduce multiple voting rights in addition to double voting rights. Without robust checks and...

The enforcement committee of the FSMA is expected to rule on the Nyrstar case shortly. It is high time, as it has been more than six years since Trafigura acquired Nyrstar's assets as part of an allegedly fraudulent restructuring. This decision will attract a great deal of interest. It was preceded by a very thorough investigation. For example, the chairman of the FSMA, Jean-Paul Servais, accompanied by vice-chairman Annemie Rombouts, stated last January during a hearing befo

Is Nyrstar’s board of directors truly caught between a rock and a hard place? That metaphor positions the board as a victim. In reality, it has uncritically aligned itself with the interests of its majority shareholder, Trafigura. In a recent interview with De Tijd, Marc Taeymans, an independent board member at Nyrstar, portrayed the company as a collatoral casuality in a dispute between Trafigura and minority shareholders. This portrayal is not only inaccurate—it is perilous

The financial newspaper De Tijd published an opinion by Kris Vansanten in which he argues that Nyrstar should finally act in line with...

The truncated communication from Nyrstar clearly does not please the Financial Services and Markets Authority ( FSMA ) and the Antwerp...

How do you commit a hold-up on a publicly traded company in Belgium? By applying a cuckoo strategy, as this video explains in less than...

"The protection of minority shareholders and the strengthening of the Belgian capital market require well-founded analysis and policy....