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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Lee Meixian
30 October 2014
Since early October, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) has been pushing out more initiatives to engage brokers to “give them a reason to start calling their clients”, Chan Kum Kong, vice-president of securities, told reporters on Wednesday.
This comes amid a quiet market with liquidity at a multi-year low.
For one thing, SGX is starting to avail tradability and order book statistics to them. These contain in-depth information on bid-ask spreads and market depth for various stocks.
SGX will also provide them a price impact cost analysis, which measures the change in trade price between the time an investor decides to perform a trade and the time the trade is executed.
“We are synthesising and packaging the information to give brokers an added instrument, so they can go to clients and give them colour to help them make a decision. It helps them advise clients who want to put down an order where price boundaries are.”
The price impact cost analysis also allows them to possibly recommend clients to raise their buy prices slightly to boost the odds of executing an order successfully, he added.
Other initiatives include weekly IPO (initial public offering) factsheets and collaterals to create weekly buzz and newsletters to highlight different market angles each week. These will help trading reps when they speak to their clients.
SGX has conducted 12 roadshows to showcase its new tools. Close to 800 trading reps from the nine retail broking houses have attended these events.
Asked how they have responded to SGX’s raft of initiatives, Mr Chan said that it has been “mixed”.
“Some will tell us they like it, others will go off on a tangent on other stuff, like wanting their lunch hour. Maybe I’m an optimist but I think it’s more positive than negative, gauging from their interest when they stay back to ask us questions,” he said.
SGX’s new initiatives come on top of the market maker incentive scheme it launched in June to improve liquidity by offering clearing fee rebates to market makers. It has nine market makers so far, comprising international and local trading groups, which it declined to name.
Market makers are broker-dealer firms that accept the risk of holding a certain number of shares of a particular stock in order to facilitate trading in the stock. Once an order is received, the market maker sells from its own inventory or seeks an offsetting order.
“So far, we have been happy with the progress of the scheme. In terms of depth, (liquidity) has increased by 20 per cent for the top 50 stocks. If we stretch it for the top 120 stocks, the increase is less - at 8-10 per cent. But in some cases, liquidity of individual index names like SIA Engineering, which is fairly illiquid, has increased 100 per cent.”
Mr Chan said there isn’t any one magic bullet that can solve the issue of poor market liquidity, which has hurt brokers’ commissions greatly.
“We do acknowledge that we need to inject that fizz into the market. We are taking one baby step and moving towards other areas as well. Within the management, the message is loud and clear, and we are reviewing many areas,” he said.