up four companies: National Exchange Pty Ltd, National Share Purchasing Corporation Pty Ltd (NSPC), Direct Share Purchasing Corporation Pty Ltd (DSPC) and Australian Share Purchasing Corporation (ASPC). By obtaining contact details through the share register of target companies, he has made several offers to purchase shares in those companies. The offers are often far below the market prices that could be realised on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). For instance, when AMP was trading at around $17, Tweed offered A$13.00 for the shares which subsequently fell to $5. Tweed's offers would often be in the form of a cover letter with large font detailing his offer and with an enclosed off-market transfer form that was pre-filled with the details of the target shareholder. A large number of shareholders, often elderly people who had never owned shares before, would take up the offer despite the market price clearly available in newspapers such as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review. Tweed has been accused of unethical behaviour and of taking advantage of unsophisticated shareholders. Gossip columnists Suzanne Carbone and Lawrence Money of The Age called him a "[t]ight-fisted share-scammer", David Elias, also of The Age, called him "a man with no conscience". The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Tweed once stated that "I didn't do morals at school." He has also been described as an "..indefatigable bottom feeder" by Ian Porter and Nabila Ahmed of The Age. In general, no law has been broken by Tweed in advancing his offers. Several shareholders who had accepted Tweed's offers annulled the contract due to technicalities in the off-market transfer process; however, the great proportion were relieved of their shares. Whenever a technicality has been identified, Tweed has amended his practices to stay one step ahead of the law, thus frustrating those that would like to shut him down. Tweed has mercilessly sued to enforce performance of agreements signed, often for minor amounts of less than $1000. These cases are usually settled in his favour and also enable the former shareholders to avoid the legal costs of mounting a defence. To foil his schemes, several measures have been attempted. Companies have tried to close their share registers, citing National Privacy Principles (NPP) or providing them in a non-machine readable form (to make it difficult for Tweed to easily create offer letters); a court case in 2003 required that all offers that Tweed