TWO former senior employees of UOB Kay Hian Private Limited (UOBKH) were charged on Wednesday for allegedly lying to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in relation to reports on a then Catalist aspirant. Lan Kang Ming, 38, and Wee Toon Lee, 34, each face three charges of providing MAS with false information in October 2018 in relation to due diligence reports on an unidentified company applying to list on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. MAS said in a media statement on Wednesday that it was performing an onsite inspection of UOBKH between June and August 2018, to assess the latter's controls, policies and procedures in relation to its role as an issue manager for Initial Public Offering (IPOs). During the examination, Lan and Wee were said to have provided different versions of a due diligence report relating to background checks on a company applying to be listed on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. UOBKH had acted as the issue manager
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Reuters in Shanghai
24 February 2013
A handful of brokerages on the mainland will be allowed to borrow shares from institutional investors for use in short selling from February 28, the official China Securities Journal said yesterday, as regulators move cautiously to develop domestic derivatives markets.
A group of 11 brokerages will be able to borrow shares in a pre-qualified pool of 90 listed "blue-chip" companies, the journal report said, citing information received from the state-owned China Securities Finance Corporation that services the pilot programme.
The 90 stocks available for borrowing represent 9.3 trillion yuan (HK$11.5 trillion) in tradable capitalisation, nearly 50 per cent of the mainland's A-share market.
The pilot project was launched in August last year during a sustained collapse in mainland equity indexes, but the first phase of the scheme was limited to allowing brokerages to borrow money, not shares, from institutional investors.
Allowing brokerages to borrow shares directly will let them, in theory, tap into the massive pool of shares held passively by mainland state-owned enterprises.
Regulators would closely manage the programme, the report said, quoting unnamed experts who predicted the impact of the initiative will be market neutral.
The report said the initial amount of stocks to be borrowed is likely to total around 510 million yuan, a fraction of the mainland's stock market capitalisation.
Rules also dictate the interest rates lenders can charge and the period for which loans can be borrowed.
Qualified brokerages would be able to borrow shares for periods of three to 182 days, with lending rates fixed from 1.5 per cent for the three-day tenor up to 3.5 per cent for the 182-day tenor, the report said.
A foreign short-seller said that by excluding small cap companies from short selling, mainland rules limit the beneficial impact short selling could exert on markets, specifically their ability to expose corporate governance problems at young companies.
The report said brokerages participating in the programme included CITIC Securities, Everbright Securities, GF Securities, Guotai Junan Securities, Haitong Securities, Huatai Securities, Shengyin Wanguo Securities, China Merchants Securities and Galaxy Securities.