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Shares in debt-laden Punch Taverns have been in freefall since it tapped investors last month for an extra £375 million in order to reduce debts still topping almost £4 billion.
That compares with the stock-market value of the UK's biggest pubs chain operator of less than £260 million.
The share price retreated a further 2½p to 88½p today and is now trading below the heavily discounted 100p of last month's fundraising.
That's not just bad news for shareholders who subscribed to the offer, but also all those directors who took the opportunity to add to their holdings, including boss Giles Thorley.
He bought an extra 206,851 shares earlier this week and is already sitting on a paper loss on his extra shares of £24,305 before expenses and averaging out.
Now stockbroker Cazenove has put the boot into Punch by pointing out that the shares have fallen more than 40% during the past month alone. Despite that it continues to rate the shares underperform on fundamentals. It says the money raised should be sufficient to meet the group's most pressing financing requirement, the repayment of a convertible bond due in December next year.
But Punch remains heavily in debt and there is no sign that the decline in profitability of the tenanted estate can be halted. Investec Securities says the fund raising was necessary and does away with the need to make enforced disposals of high-quality assets. It rates Punch a hold.
Elsewhere in the sector, Mitchells & Butlers fell 2½p to 243¼p and Enterprise Inns 1¾p to 122¾p.
Shares generally were a touch softer for choice despite selective gains among the miners. This followed sell-offs overnight in New York and this morning in Asia.
The FTSE 100 fell 15.32 to 4171.68, its lowest since 28 April. Shares staged a rally on Wall Street this afternoon in the wake of yesterday's sell-off. The Dow Jones rose 53.20 to 8216.80.
This week's crash in shares of Phorm shows few signs of bottoming out with the price tumbling 32½p to 210p. That means the shares have now more than halved since opening up on Monday at 475p. Only last month the internet monitoring specialist tapped institutional investors for £15 million by way of a placing at 450p. But earlier this week, BT Group, 1.05p off at 101.2p, said it had no immediate plans to roll out Phorm's services across its network and TalkTalk's parent company Carphone Warehouse, down 2¼p at 152¼p, confirmed today it had ended its commerical agreement with Phorm.
Boom time for mining companies is over and share prices will continue to lose ground in line with falling commodity prices. That is the conclusion of two major City players who have warned clients that mining companies face leaner times.
Investec Securities says: "After months of strong performance, commodities and mining equities are starting to show signs of being overbought."
It reckons commodity prices have further to fall in the short term now that the Chinese have officially stopped stockpiling.
Citigroup has also repeated its forecast for a short-term "pull-back" as restocking in China comes to an end.
Investec thinks the market may shift its focus from China to US and European demand. "But these economies remain weak, despite all the talk of green shoots," it warned.
Citigroup's preferred commodities are copper and coal. It rates Rio Tinto, up 9p at 1929p, as a buy now the £9.3 billion rights issue has been completed, and has raised its share-price target from 2810p to 2900p.
Investec favours Rio Tinto as well, and has raised its rating from hold to buy following a drop of 28% in the shares during the past month.
Standard & Poors has raised Rio's rating to BBB+/A-2 with a stable outlook. BHP Billiton is also fancied. Its shares responded with a rise of 18½p to 1318½p.
In addition, Citigroup has lifted Antofagasta, 3p better at 579½p, and Vedanta Resources, down 49p at 1273p, from sell to hold, but has cut the target for Ferrexpo, 4¾p off at 124½p, from 165p to 140p with a hold rating, and Lonmin, 40p lower at 1029p, from 1385p to 1190p.
RBS has raised bid target Anglo American from sell to hold. Anglo, 19½p off at 1608p, has rejected a bid approach from Anglo-Swiss miner Xstrata, down 20.7p at 589.3p.
