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The new independent body to oversee stock market regulations may review the requirement for listed companies to file quarterly reports and minimum trading price rules. Its chairman Tan Cheng Han told a briefing yesterday that the Singapore Exchange Regulation, or RegCo for short, will not be afraid to reassess sacred cows in the rules framework. Professor Tan, who will lead a five-person board, said he intends to bring "a pair of fresh eyes" to the process. "Let us ask some questions: Are the rules in place today still necessary, given changing conditions? Are they merely in place because they are intended to meet particular challenges that no longer exist?" Prof Tan, who was speaking at the Metropolis, where the RegCo and its around 100 staff will operate, noted that a market regulator must avoid "chasing shadows" - implementing tough and disruptive rules to address risks that have a low chance of causing problems. The RegCo board, ...

ISR Capital is going ahead with its planned acquisition of a rare earth concession in Madagascar today, says executive chairman Chen Tong at the company’s annual general meeting held earlier this morning. In response to questions from shareholders, Chen said that the company has engaged a third valuer to appraise the value of the concession. Two earlier valuation reports were rejected by the Singapore Exchange. Chen said a third valuer has been appointed after consulting the Singapore Exchange and that the report will be drawn up according to the Australian mining valuation standards, otherwise known as the VALMIN Code. “We are confident that the third report will be accepted,” said Chen, at the meeting, attended by just over ten retail shareholders. The rejected first and second reports had appraised the concession to be worth more than US$1 billion ($1.4 billion). The first report was rejected because SGX had deemed the valuer not qualified while the second report was ...

There is little money for quality research but stock exchanges are keen to turn things around and fintech may help The FTSE ST Catalist Index is up 16 per cent since the start of the year, better than the 9.8 per cent rise from the Straits Times Index. But how many people realise this? The fact remains that Singapore's small- and mid-cap universe is not easy to love. Certain stocks still go for days without seeing a single trade on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). Not because they are suspended, but because they are forgotten by investors. The problem could lie with the lack of good quality research on stocks. The argument is that prices are a function of good-quality information. If there is little or poor information, investors stop trading in the stocks and liquidity dries up. This is especially so for small- and mid-cap stocks. Fewer than 70 stocks on the SGX have a market cap of more than $2 billion and institutional interest tapers off quickly if liquidity or mark...

Having restructured its business to focus on mine ownership rather than mining services, Geo Energy is now ready to stretch its sails to catch the new wind in coal prices. On the cards are plans to expand coal production and acquire even more mines to boost its reserves. The group has come a long way from the days when it was just a step away from being added to Singapore Exchange's watchlist for companies that have been in the red for three years, CEO Tung Kum Hon told The Business Times. Brought in to turn around the struggling group in December 2015, Mr Tung made a radical decision: dispose the group's mine operation and contracting services business that it had listed with. With a subsidiary of Jakarta-listed Delta Dunia, PT Bukit Makmuar Mandiri Utama (Buma), providing the group overburden removal and coal haulage services at very competitive rates since mid-2015, the businesses didn't make sense for the group anymore, said Mr Tung. So out went the d...

International investors including BlackRock Inc and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan have voiced their concerns about moves to allow dual-class share listings in Singapore, saying that they risk damaging the city's stock market and harming the region. Dual-class shares will almost certainly prove to be counterproductive for Singapore and "likely trigger a race to the bottom regionally", the Asian Corporate Governance Association, an industry group whose members also include listed companies, as well as insurance and accounting firms, said in a response to Singapore Exchange's (SGX) consultation on the plan. The fight for global capital has pushed exchanges to seek new ways to attract initial share sales. Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd in January said that it would look again at dual-class shares more than a year after its regulator turned down the idea. Such shares comprise a class of stock, often distributed to founding shareholders, that carries ...

Imperium Crown Limited said it has received letters of intent for the remaining two of its properties in Tokyo, Japan, for 3.05 billion yen (S$38.6 million). These properties are Green Forest Itabashi, comprising a 1,221.67 sq m leasehold land and an 11-storey retail-cum-apartment building; and Hatchobori Place, a six-storey retail-cum-office building and 579.98 sq m land on which the building sits. Imperium Crown's Japanese portfolio consists of five properties in Tokyo. The group had earlier received letters of intent for three other properties for S$41.8 million. On April 7, it signed a sale and purchase agreement for one of the three properties for S$19.3 million. The planned sale of its Japanese property portfolio is aimed at strengthening the group's cash and financial position to embark on its proposed business plans in the coming years. Imperium Crown has, in recent months, set its sights on Australia and China as potential growth markets and is exp...

Australian miner Alliance Mineral Assets has entered into a lithium rights joint-venture (JV) agreement with Lithco, a unit of Australia-listed Tawana Resources, furthering a farm-in agreement that both parties signed in February. The latest agreement outlines the terms and conditions in which the JV will conduct the exploration and, if warranted, mining operations of lithium rights at the Bald Hill tenements in Western Australia. It will apply after Lithco has spent the expenditure commitment of A$7.5 million (S$7.9 million) that it promised in the farm-in agreement. But if both parties were to discover material bearing lithium suited for economic exploitation, they will negotiate and execute a separate mining JV agreement. In addition to the above, Alliance Mineral Assets said that it has engaged Canaccord Genuity (Australia) to provide corporate advisory services, in light of high interest from both capital markets and potential offtake partners to be involved in financ...

Pair assisting with CAD investigation into potential false trading and market-rigging The executive chairman and chief executive of KS Energy and his son, an executive director at the offshore and marine company, are being investigated by Singapore's white-collar crime buster. KS Energy said in a stock exchange filing last Saturday that Mr Kris Taenar Wiluan and his son Richard James Wiluan had been been interviewed by the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) in its investigations into a potential contravention of Section 197 of the Securities and Futures Act, which deals with false trading and market-rigging transactions. The older Wiluan posted police bail and was released after his interview while his son was released without requiring bail. "Both have informed the board that they have and will continue to cooperate fully in the investigations, including granting access to all their electronic data, IT equipment and data storage devices from January 2015,...

Dealing with the ongoing challenge of obtaining funding will also be on top of the list for Magnus Bocker Growing investor advocacy and board accountability, and dealing with the ongoing challenge of obtaining funding, will be at the top of the agenda for former Singapore Exchange (SGX) chief Magnus Bocker in his new role as honorary chairman of Singapore's investor advocacy group, the Securities Investors Association (Singapore) or SIAS. Speaking exclusively to The Business Times soon after his appointment, Mr Bocker shared the key objectives and challenges he intends to tackle during his three-year tenure, even while he stressed that his role would mainly support that of SIAS president and CEO David Gerald. "I hope to see two things develop in the year to come. The first is to see more retail investors engaging in the market, hopefully through SIAS. The second and maybe the more important is to seek effective accountability and asking the right questions of bo...

It used to be that when you called up your broker to ask him for some advice on what stocks to buy, he would happily give you a couple of tips on what was hot in the market. If you bought into his spin, you would give him an order and that was it. Life was that simple. But, the rules have been tightened considerably since the demise of Lehman Brothers almost a decade ago when 9,900 investors here suffered a whopping $520 million of losses from the toxic minibonds concocted by the US investment bank which were mis-sold to them as a "low-risk" investment product. Nowadays, before a financial adviser sells you anything, he is required to ask you probing questions about your personal financial situation and financial objectives. From that information, he tries to ascertain whether the product he is recommending is suitable for you. Now, if you are a remisier - a self-employed broker who makes a living off the commissions on the trades executed for clients - you...