Glimmer of Hope for Lomas Shareholders Turns Out to Be Misplaced

Investors who own shares in Lomas Financial Corp., Dallas, may have been startled last week by word of a 13D filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Tweedy, Browne Co., a New York investment company that owns more than 5% of Lomas shares.

An item on the Dow Jones news wire said, correctly, that Tweedy reported selling a block of 264,985 shares of Lomas at an average price of $5.67 a share on June 29. The transaction reduced Tweedy's holding to 1.3 million shares, the report also said.

The problem was that the shares had been selling on the Big Board for a bit more than 50 cents a share, and the Tweedy transaction or transactions never appeared on the tape at that price.

Lomas has been on the block for more than a year, and reports have circulated recently that some sort of transaction might be imminent. Was the sale a signal.

As it turned out, there was a simpler explanation. A Tweedy spokeswoman said it made an error in drafting its 13D report and would file an amended version. Apparently, the decimal point got misplaced and the actual average selling price was about 57 cents.

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