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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Andrea Sohsandrea
04 November 2014
Delays in a fund-raising exercise - due to the surprise visit by the Commercial Affairs Department - had caused LionGold Corp to be unable to assess the impairment of the value of an asset in time.
This, coupled with a rapid decline in gold prices, led the group to underestimate its impairment losses in its unaudited full year results for the year ended March 31, 2014.
LionGold revealed this on Monday in response to queries by the Singapore Exchange on the reason behind the S$48.49 million difference between the audited and unaudited results in impairment losses. Of these, more than half, or S$27.87 million, were due to additional impairment on its exploration and evaluation expenditure. This was mainly owing to the Konongo Gold Project in Ghana that is majority-owned by LionGold’s 77 per cent subsidiary Signature Metals Limited, LionGold said.
In working out the valuation for the Konongo Gold project between February and April this year, LionGold had used a discounted cashflow model that assumed the firm would support the project’s cash requirements of US$30 million.
To fulfil this, LionGold had planned a fund-raising exercise to raise up to S$40.6 million, through a placement of 37.3 million shares and the issuance of S$35 million of convertible bonds. The exercise, however, was derailed by the visit by the Commercial Affairs Department on April 2, causing a delay in the funding for the project. Hence, the group could not complete the impairment assessment in time at the point of the unaudited full year results announcement, LionGold said.
Other additional impairment losses on exploration and evaluation expenditure came about after the decline in gold price assumption caused the fair value of its Western Australian asset and Canadian asset to be impacted, the firm added.
Impairment on assets in which LionGold holds a minority stake added another S$19.91 million to the difference. The share prices of Citigold Corporation and Unity Mining - in which LionGold holds 16 per cent and 12 per cent respectively - had fallen in line with the fall in the gold price, and continued to decline after March 31.
The explanation by LionGold comes as its auditors expressed concerns on whether LionGold is able to achieve enough funding and continue as an operating entity, due to its huge loss after taxation of S$189 million, compared with S$11.2 million a year ago.
LionGold has sought to assure shareholders that it will be able to raise enough to fund its operations in the next 12 months.
The counter rose 0.3 cent on Monday to S$0.03, recovering from a new low of S$0.022 on Oct 30.