Friday, January 06, 2006

Park National, Ohio Firm That Owns $36MM of ExxonMobil, Becomes Latest ERHC Energy Institutional Investor

According to SEC filings, Park National Corp. (click on its name to view holdings), whose second-largest stockholding is 622,242 shares of ExxonMobil Corp. valued at $36,445,000, has become the latest institutional investor to invest in ERHC Energy.

Park National Corp., whose affiliates include 11 banks, aviation and auto finance companies and an insurance company, all located in 28 counties of Ohio, closed Thursday on the Amex at $105.69, off $0.84 for the day.

The $5-billion holding firm filed a statement with the SEC on Dec. 31, 2005, telling regulators it had purchased 100,000 shares of ERHC Energy (OTC BB symbol: ERHE) common stock, for which it paid $31,000. Virtually all of the Park National holdings are NYSE blue-chip stocks.

Park National became just the fourth institution to hold reportable quantities of ERHC Energy stock.

In the last 10 minutes of trading yesterday, just under 275,000 shares were purchased at prices between $0.34 and $0.355 in 17 Buys. Over the day, which saw a 14.75 percent rise in share price, Buys outpaced Sells 696,718 to 249,626, or about 2.8:1, with only 4,000 purchased somewhere between Bid and Ask. Volume for the day was 950,300, according to the New York Times Business section.

Other than the Park National filing, there was no news of special import that might have accounted for the sharp rise in price, which some investors earlier attributed to post-tax-loss buying.

No comments: