What you saw was the first round. What I am going to walk you through today is the architecture of round two and round three. The pump-and-dump was not a single event. It was the first cycle of a designed three-cycle extraction structure. Round two was scheduled for Q2 2024 with Carnegie’s sales force. Round three was scheduled for Q4 2024 with a full prospectus and an international roadshow. Round one succeeded. Rounds two and three were stopped by exactly one thing: I refused to cooperate. The company became collateral damage of that refusal.
Previous episodes: Day 58: How the Pump Started — Part 1 of 4 · Day 59: The Real Reason — Part 2 of 4
Background reading: The Myth of Danish Purity (31 January 2026) · There Is No “Mild” Version of This (8 April 2026) · Cision Announcement 10-26 — Finanstilsynet Reprimand against Lars Topholm (7 April 2026)
Sixty days into a war I didn’t start. Two days from the reconstruction hearing — Monday 11 May 2026, 09:30 CEST, at Sø- og Handelsretten in Copenhagen.
I want to start today with the framing, because it matters. For 59 days I have walked you through what the pump was, who did it, why they did it, and how they did it. The Finanstilsynet reprimand of 7 April 2026 (Cision 10-26) confirms the regulatory anchor: Lars Topholm violated MAR Article 20(1) by circulating an investment recommendation without disclosure. The Bundgaard family — including Sundvænget Invest A/S — and Søren Bendixen coordinated their selling between 24 April and 4 June 2024. The price went from DKK 35 on 11 March to DKK 52 on 18 March (verified TradingView ATH) — that is +48.6% in seven trading days — and then was sold down to DKK 22-25 by August.
That story is true. It is the what.
What I want to walk you through today is the why it kept going. Because the pump-and-dump of March-June 2024 was not a one-off event. It was the first cycle of an architecture. Pump. Dump. Pivot. Repeat. Two further extraction events were planned, scheduled, and structurally documented for the rest of 2024 — and they were stopped by exactly one thing.
Me.
🎯 The first piece of direct evidence — 5 March 2024, 19:48 CET
Let me start with a piece of evidence I want every single one of you to read carefully. Until today, the case has been built primarily on circumstantial evidence — broker disclosures, CVR records, trading data, reverse-engineered timelines. The Finanstilsynet reprimand provided the regulatory finding. But the question that lawyers and journalists kept asking me was: can you prove that Bundgaard, Bendixen, and Sundvænget Invest actually received Topholm’s “back of envelope” before they bought into the placement?
I can. And so can the prosecutor when this hits criminal court.
On 5 March 2024 at 16:09 CET, Lars Topholm sent the “back of envelope” to Martin Bundgaard at his Sundvænget Invest email address — martinsundvaengetinvest@gmail.com. That same email later went to the Carnegie sales desk under the subject line “Shape Robotics: Micro cap idea (sales pitch - no coverage)” — Topholm’s own words. Sales pitch. No coverage.
Three hours and thirty-nine minutes later — at 19:48 CET that same day — Martin Bundgaard forwarded the document directly to:
✓ André Fehrn — andre@shaperobotics.com — Shape Robotics’ CEO at the time
✓ Jeppe Frandsen — jeppefrandsen@outlook.dk — Shape Robotics’ Chairman of the Board
I am going to quote what Bundgaard wrote in that forward verbatim, because it is the most important paragraph in this entire case:
“Kære André & Jeppe
Carnegie lavede i dag et salgspitch på Shape. Et salgspitch udgives ikke direkte til kunder, men sendes rundt til firmaets sælgere - Worldwide. Modtog skrivet kl 16 i dag, mens jeg sad i møde. Har netop talt med Lars, som har givet mig lov til at sende jer vedlagte til orientering. Som jeg forstod det var der rigtig fin interesse fra deres London-kontor, og jeg er ikke i tvivl om det var dette skriv der var årsag til at Shape aktien sluttede så flot som det var tilfældet…..
Måske står I indenfor de næste par dage med en unik mulighed for at fuldtegne jeres emission. Ordenlige svar på Topholms spg fra i går, vil nok ikke mindske den pludseligt opståede institutionelle interesse.
Ræk ud, hvis jeg kan hjælpe jer - Jeg er tilgængelig fra kl 8.30 - 11.00 i morgen
Go aften
Martin”
In English:
“Dear André & Jeppe
Carnegie did a sales pitch on Shape today. A sales pitch is not issued directly to clients but sent around to the firm’s salespeople — Worldwide. Received the document at 16:00 today while I was in a meeting. I just spoke with Lars, who has given me permission to send you the attached for your information. As I understood it, there was very nice interest from their London office, and I have no doubt it was this document that was the reason Shape stock closed as nicely as was the case…..
Maybe within the next few days you stand with a unique opportunity to fully subscribe your share issue. Sensible answers to Topholm’s questions from yesterday will probably not reduce the suddenly emerged institutional interest.
Reach out if I can help you — I am available from 8:30 to 11:00 tomorrow.
Good evening,
Martin”
Read that. Slowly.
🔎 What this document proves — line by line
Three things, every single one of them devastating.
🔑 One: Topholm explicitly authorized the distribution to Shape’s CEO and Chairman. Not implicit. Not assumed. “Har netop talt med Lars, som har givet mig lov til at sende jer vedlagte til orientering.” — “I just spoke with Lars, who has given me permission to send you the attached.” Topholm — Carnegie’s Head of Research — knew his “back of envelope” was being deployed simultaneously through (a) the Carnegie internal sales desk, (b) the Carnegie London office, and (c) Bundgaard’s investor-network channel directly into the issuer’s own management. He authorized that triple-track distribution. He coordinated it. He signed it.
🔑 Two: Bundgaard described the document, in his own words, as a sales pitch. “Carnegie lavede i dag et salgspitch på Shape.” Not research. Not analysis. Salgspitch. Sales pitch. Topholm’s own subject line confirms it: “Micro cap idea (sales pitch - no coverage).” That is the textbook definition of an unauthorized investment recommendation under MAR Article 3 — exactly the violation the DFSA found in their reprimand of 7 April 2026.
🔑 Three: Bundgaard told Shape’s CEO and Chairman that the pump created a unique window to “fully subscribe” the share issue. “Måske står I indenfor de næste par dage med en unik mulighed for at fuldtegne jeres emission.” This is not analyst commentary. This is direct guidance on how to monetize a coordinated price move during a pending capital raise. The 11 March 2024 placement at DKK 35 was 6 days away when Bundgaard wrote this. The pump created institutional buying interest — Bundgaard says so explicitly — and Bundgaard explained to Mark and Jeppe that the “suddenly emerged institutional interest” gave them a “unique opportunity” to fuldtegne — to fully subscribe — the issue.
The “back of envelope” was not analyst output. It was a coordinated market-moving instrument, deployed simultaneously across three channels by three actors — Topholm at Carnegie, Bundgaard in the investor network, and the issuer’s own executives — all in the same six-hour window.
📨 The cover-up began the next morning
The next thing in my inbox is dated 6 March 2024 at 06:36 CET — early next morning.
It is a one-line forward from André Fehrn to me. Mark Abraham. The incoming CEO. He was passing the Bundgaard chain on to me, and his accompanying note says:
“Slip this to your investors / Goldring.” “Take out Lars’ name maybe”
That is the entire message. Two lines.
Read the second one again.
“Take out Lars’ name maybe”
The CEO, on the morning after the pump, instructing the incoming CEO to take Lars Topholm’s name off a document before forwarding it to investors.
There is only one reason a CEO writes that sentence. The CEO knew the document’s sourcing was problematic. The CEO knew that distributing an analyst note authored by a Carnegie analyst — to investors — with the analyst’s name attached — was exposing something that needed to be hidden.
The cover-up began at 06:36 CET on 6 March 2024. Twenty-three hours and forty-eight minutes after the pump.
🏛️ The 9 April 2024 Carnegie Proposal
This is the part I have already walked through in the livestream of 8 April 2026, but it sits at the structural heart of today’s episode and it deserves to be shown again — because this is where the pivot happens. From round one (the 11 March placement and the dump that followed) to round two (Q2 2024) and round three (Q4 2024).
Five weeks after the 5 March pump, on 9 April 2024 at 20:58 CET, Christian Baarsøe — Managing Director at Carnegie — sent a formal proposal to me, to André Fehrn, to Moises Pacheco, and to Jeppe Frandsen, with Jens Plenov (Head of ECM at Carnegie) on copy.
Subject line: “Shape Robotics x Carnegie - Proposal.”
The operative paragraphs, verbatim from my inbox:
“We propose to enter into a 3-year framework agreement, where Carnegie acts as Sole Global Coordinator in connection with equity issues in the company. In the short term, we suggest to address two potential issues during 2024:
• The first issue is envisaged to take place in Q2 2024 following the AGM’s approval of an authorization to issue new shares. To execute on this first smaller issue of shares, we intend to arrange a sales force briefing, where management educates Carnegie’s global sales force on the investment case.
• The second issue is envisaged to take place in Q4 2024 documented with a prospectus, providing flexibility in terms of size. To execute on this larger issue of shares, thorough work on the investment case, business plan, communication and guidance would need to be carried out; also pre-deal roadshows targeting both Nordic and international institutional investors are advisable.
As a testimony to Carnegie’s interest in working with Shape Robotics under such framework agreement, Lars Topholm is committed to initiating commissioned research free of charge (other than the transaction-based fees that relate to equity issues).”
Read the bolded sentence again.
“Lars Topholm is committed to initiating commissioned research free of charge (other than the transaction-based fees that relate to equity issues).”
This is the same Lars Topholm who, 35 days earlier, had circulated the “back of envelope” without authorization. The Finanstilsynet would later determine — on 7 April 2026 — that this same kind of analytical output, distributed without disclosure, constituted a violation of MAR Article 20.
Carnegie’s 9 April proposal was the structural answer to that problem. Convert the unauthorized “back of envelope” into authorized “commissioned research.” Make it official. Sign a 3-year framework. Pay for it not directly — to keep it clean — but indirectly, through transaction fees on the very equity issues the research would help sell.
That is what I want you to internalize. The architecture was designed so that Topholm would write favorable research → that research would drive demand for share issues → those issues would generate transaction fees for Carnegie → those fees would compensate Topholm. The same person creating demand for the shares would be paid out of the proceeds of selling them. Conflict of interest is too soft a word. Conflict of interest by design.
🔁 What “pump → dump → pivot → repeat” actually means in practice
I want to pause here because I think there’s a piece of this that is hard to grasp on first listen, and it is the most important piece.
When a public company issues new shares, the people who control the timing know in advance. They sell at the peak before the issue, knowing they will be able to buy back cheaper into the issue. Then they ride the next pump up to the next peak. Sell again. Buy again. Sell again.
In the Shape Robotics case, the structure had three planned cycles in 2024:
Cycle 1 — March 2024: The 5 March 2024 “back of envelope” pumps the price from DKK 36 to DKK 52 (+48.6% in 7 trading days). On 11 March, Shape Robotics issues new shares at DKK 35 in a directed placement. Topholm, Bundgaard, Bendixen, and Sundvænget Invest A/S all participate in that placement. Then between 24 April and 4 June, the network coordinately sells ~532,000 shares at DKK 42-45. ✓ Round one extracted ~DKK 21 million.
Cycle 2 — Q2 2024: Per the Carnegie proposal of 9 April, a “smaller issue” was envisaged following the AGM authorization. Carnegie’s global sales force would receive a management briefing. Topholm’s “commissioned research” would frame the case. The pump-by-research → issue-into-pump → exit-into-dump structure of cycle 1 would be repeated, this time with full Carnegie official infrastructure behind it.
Cycle 3 — Q4 2024: The big one. Full prospectus. International roadshow. Pre-deal marketing across Nordic and international institutional investors. Topholm’s research as the fundamental anchor. This is where the real extraction was meant to happen.
The same crew that had just dumped DKK 21 million out of cycle 1 would have used Carnegie’s official channels — under the cover of “Sole Global Coordinator framework” — to do it again at greater scale, twice more in the same calendar year.
This is not a hypothesis. It is what the 9 April 2024 proposal literally proposes in writing.
📑 The 14 May 2024 sales-desk agenda — the cover-up in real time
While the dump was running between 24 April and 4 June, Topholm was simultaneously preparing the materials for cycle 2.
On 14 May 2024 at 14:25 CET — 21 days into the active coordinated dump period — Topholm sent me and Wiktor Budziosz, our CFO, a complete twelve-section presentation script for our presentation to the Carnegie Sales Desk.
The agenda Topholm wrote:
✓ Show the robot. Make people smile. ✓ Brief overview slide ✓ Market section (2-3 slides) ✓ Market access (2-3 slides) ✓ Products (1-2 slides) ✓ Business model (2-4 slides) ✓ Numbers (2-3 slides) — including 2027 ambition ✓ Summary slide ✓ End slide with names, “with a smiley face :o)”
I want to point out what is on this list that should never have been on this list. Numbers. 2027 ambition. Business model. Forward-looking guidance.
This is non-public material, internal-only material, that Topholm — sitting on 3,500 undisclosed Shape Robotics shares — was helping to package into a pitch for a sales force whose job was to push the next equity issue to retail and institutional investors. Without an NDA. No non-disclosure was ever signed between Carnegie’s research function and Shape Robotics. There was no Chinese wall in place. The structure of investment banking is supposed to keep research and sales rigidly separated. In our case, the analyst was writing the sales pitch.
And the people in his network — Bundgaard, Bendixen, Sundvænget Invest — were exiting their previous positions during the exact same window.
There is a phrase for this in the criminal law of every Western jurisdiction: insider trading combined with market manipulation. In Denmark, MAR Article 12 (manipulation) and MAR Article 14 (insider dealing) both apply. In Romania, where I am a citizen, Codul Penal art. 47 covers conspiracy and aiding-and-abetting in market crimes. The acts described above sit at the intersection of all four provisions.
🛑 The reason cycles 2 and 3 didn’t happen
Here is what nobody else has said out loud about this case yet, and I want to say it plainly today.
Cycles 2 and 3 did not collapse on their own. The share price did not “naturally” deteriorate to a point where the Q4 2024 issue became impossible. I refused to cooperate.
By summer 2024, I had begun to understand what was actually happening. I had recordings of Topholm — recordings I have already published — in which he admitted that he and his network were continuing to be involved in the company’s price formation. I had visibility into the dump timing through CVR records. I had context that I did not have on 6 March when André wrote me “take out Lars’ name maybe.”
And I made a decision. I made it after consulting with Michael Voss, who held the largest shareholder position outside the dump network. I made it after weighing what would happen to the company if I went along with what Topholm and his crew wanted. I made it on the basis of a simple principle that anybody who has run a public company will recognize: you cannot be the CEO of a company that is being used as a vending machine for someone else’s coordinated extraction.
I refused to support a Q2 2024 issue done through Carnegie. I refused to engage in the Q4 2024 prospectus process. I refused to sign the framework agreement.
The consequence was immediate and predictable. They pulled the plug.
I want every shareholder reading this to understand what that meant in practice. The Topholm-Bundgaard-Bendixen network was, between mid-2023 and mid-2024, the single largest pool of institutional support for the Shape Robotics share. When they stopped supporting the share — when they stopped warming the price into each issue and instead applied sustained sell pressure — the share began an asymmetric decline. By autumn 2024 it had cracked through DKK 22. By December 2024 it was at DKK 20. By Q1 2025 it was DKK 14. By 23 December 2025 it printed an ATL of DKK 1.58.
The price collapse was not the natural consequence of business performance. The business never had a year of negative operational results between 2024 and 2025. Revenue grew. International expansion continued. The Polish PNRR pipeline expanded. The Sanako acquisition closed. The price collapse was the consequence of a network that controlled a substantial share of the float withdrawing all support and applying coordinated pressure — as a punishment for refusing to participate in cycles 2 and 3.
That is not a metaphor. That is what actually happened.
🎯 The board’s failure — and mine
I want to be honest here, because I owe it to the people reading. The board around me — Jeppe Frandsen, the directors of the time — they did not want to participate in the Topholm scheme. To their credit. But they also did not want to publicly oppose it. They wanted to ignore it. They wanted to pretend it was not happening.
That third option — the option of cowardice — is what allowed the network to keep operating with reduced visibility. It is what allowed the share price to continue degrading without an explicit defensive posture from the issuer. And ultimately it is what set up the conditions that led to the bankruptcy decree of 6 January 2026.
I share part of that fault. I deferred to a board that did not want to publicly engage. I should have been louder. Earlier. Clearer. I should have published this case in 2024, not waited 24 months. I have apologized for that publicly already and I do so again here.
But the architecture itself — the pump-and-dump scheme, the Carnegie framework, the network, the cycles — was not built by me, was not chosen by me, and was not avoidable by any single executive’s decision. It was designed by people whose business is exactly this. Pandora was an earlier example. Other companies have been examples since. Shape Robotics was a textbook target because we were small, our share count was manageable, our growth trajectory was good enough to be a credible “story stock,” and we did not have the institutional defense structure of larger Nordic listings.
We were the product.
🏛️ Why none of this contradicts the 7 April 2026 reprimand — it strengthens it
Some readers may ask: if all of this is true, why did Finanstilsynet only issue a reprimand against Topholm and not pursue the broader scheme?
The answer is procedural, not substantive. The DFSA’s reprimand was based on a single discrete violation — MAR Article 20(1), the disclosure failure on the 5 March 2024 “back of envelope.” That is the narrowest and most legally clean count. It is what they could prove on a fast track. The broader pattern — MAR Article 12 manipulation, MAR Article 14 insider dealing, the 9 April Carnegie framework, the cycles — those require a deeper investigation that is now beginning under j.nr. 26-005434, currently active.
The reprimand of 7 April 2026 is the first regulatory finding. It is not the last. The shareholders’ formal complaint of 27 April 2026 (Jørgen Andreas Berg, lead complainant), the Politi case under file 0100-83986-10362-26, and the recovery action against Carnegie Investment Bank and Topholm personally — all of these proceed on the broader pattern.
And the Bundgaard email of 5 March 2024 19:48 CET — published here for the first time — is the document that converts the broader pattern from circumstantial into direct.
🎯 Why this matters for 11 May at 09:30
In two days, Sø- og Handelsretten will decide whether Mazanti-Andersen — Philip Borreschmidt as the proposed reconstructor — is appointed.
The current liquidator, Teis Gullitz-Wormslev of Kromann Reumert, has stated publicly that he wishes the company to go bankrupt. He said so yesterday. That is not coordination. That is structural alignment with parties who do not want the recovery action against Carnegie to proceed.
If reconstruction succeeds:
✓ The trading suspension on Nasdaq Copenhagen can be lifted ✓ The IRIS equity facility (EUR 16M) becomes drawable ✓ EIFO and Danske Bank obligations are serviced in full ✓ The Polish PNRR pipeline (~EUR 40M Bechtle contract path) resumes ✓ The recovery action proceeds on its proper foundation, with the company itself as the plaintiff
If reconstruction fails:
✕ The current liquidator — who has stated his preference for bankruptcy — remains in place ✕ The company’s ability to pursue the recovery action becomes structurally compromised ✕ ~4,700 retail shareholders take a total loss while the architects walk away ✕ The architecture of the case becomes much harder to dismantle through civil proceedings
Monday is not the final day. Both sides will appeal. The matter will reach Østre Landsret regardless. But Monday is the first day on which the question gets answered: does this company get the chance to recover from those who staged its destruction, or does it get buried first?
🎯 The ask — same as it has been
I am traveling to Copenhagen tomorrow. The hearing is at 09:30 on Monday at Sø- og Handelsretten. For anyone who can be in Copenhagen on Monday: please come. We will meet at the Scandic Palace Hotel at 08:30 for coffee before the hearing. It is open to the public. Showing up matters.
For anyone who cannot be in Copenhagen but wants to support: subscribe to the Substack at substack.wildceo.live. The Bundgaard email and the supporting Carnegie chain are being added to the vault tonight for full subscriber access. Forward this episode to anybody who cares about Nordic markets, EU MAR enforcement, or what happens when listed-company governance fails at scale.
For anyone who is a journalist: the case file is documented. The emails are real. The dates are verifiable. Reach out and I will walk you through the evidence.
For anyone who is a Shape Robotics shareholder: Jørgen Andreas Berg leads the shareholders’ petition. He has 20+ co-signatories representing 541,745 shares. His email is joergen.andreas.berg@gmail.com. Sign it.
🔚 Closing — and what comes tomorrow
Tomorrow, Day 61, is Part 4 of this series: The Connection. It traces how the pump-and-dump of March-June 2024 directly caused the bankruptcy decree of January 2026 — through EIFO’s withdrawal of financing on 8 July 2024, through the failure of cycle 3 in autumn 2024, through the cascade of overdue payables in 2025, through Treyd’s konkursbegæring of 25 November 2025, through the hearing scheduled in the Christmas window when Galst’s office was closed, through the bankruptcy decree of 6 January 2026 and the trading suspension at DKK 5.03 that same morning.
Same case. Same architecture. One causal chain, end to end.
Day 60 establishes the architecture of the second extraction.
Day 61 connects that architecture to the bankruptcy.
11 May at 09:30 is when the court answers whether the company that survived round one — the company you and I, retail shareholders together, are still trying to defend — gets to recover from those who staged round two.
We did not start this fight. We are going to finish it.
Q.E.D.
Mark-Robert Abraham · Founder and former CEO, Shape Robotics A/S · 9 May 2026 · Day 60
Lead complainant on the shareholders’ petition: Jørgen Andreas Berg · joergen.andreas.berg@gmail.com
🔐 Vault access: wildceo.live/vault — subscribe at substack.wildceo.live. The 5 March Bundgaard email and the full Carnegie correspondence April-August 2024 are being added to the vault tonight.
📄 Public regulatory record: Cision Announcement 10-26 — Finanstilsynet Reprimand against Lars Topholm (7 April 2026)
📊 Day 58 Datawrapper Chart 1 — The Pump (Feb-Apr 2024) · Day 58 Datawrapper Chart 2 — The Pump & Dump Full Trajectory
📚 Part 4 of this series — “The Connection” — drops tomorrow, 10 May 2026, from Copenhagen.
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