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When Caleb Chao started working on Nomura Holdings Inc's mortgage-bond desk after graduating from college, he got an education very different from the one offered at Cornell University. Testifying at the trial of three former Nomura traders, Mr Chao said on Monday he was soon taught how to mislead customers about prices and other details in order to get larger commissions. "The purpose was to sort of make a client feel like we were working for them, but in reality we were making more money," Mr Chao told jurors in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut. "I just graduated from college and I had no other prior experience. I was relying on how my bosses told me how the market operated." Mr Chao, who worked for Nomura from 2010 to 2014, is the second former trader at the Japanese firm to take the stand for prosecutors in the trial of three ex-colleagues accused of lying to their clients. Ross Shapiro, Michael Gramins and Tyler Peters deny wrongdoing...

One of Hong Kong's most high-profile targets of activist short sellers has hatched an unorthodox plan to fight back. It's called the "anti-malicious short selling alliance.'' The idea is for companies to band together when bearish traders pounce, sharing crisis-management advice and in some cases even offering equity investments. Fullshare Holdings Ltd, the property company that unveiled the plan on Monday, has faced allegations from two short sellers in the last month. The proposal highlights how ubiquitous short sellers have become in Hong Kong. Bearish research firms tracked by Activist Insight have started 18 campaigns in the city during the past 12 months, the most since at least 2012. Short sellers including Muddy Waters and Glaucus Research dismissed Fullshare's idea, saying it would be bad for shareholders. "The best idea is to have open and transparent reporting, which the accounts are supposed to reflect," said Andrew Sulliv...

More Singapore companies consider moving to Hong Kong bourse The competition between the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and the stock exchange of Hong Kong for listings looks set to intensify as more companies here mull over moves to head to the Republic's rival to raise capital. Market watchers said this reveals that a growing number of companies are hoping to deepen their business presence in the Greater China market, but these moves are not a guaranteed success. As Osim prepares its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong as V3 Group, news emerged earlier this month that Pan-United Corp is spinning off its Chinese port division for a Hong Kong listing, while LHN said it is eyeing a dual primary listing there. Both SGX-listed, Pan-United is Singapore's largest ready-mixed concrete and cement supplier, and LHN is a real estate management firm. The number of Singapore companies exploring a Hong Kong IPO has "doubled", according to PwC.     21 Num...

Shares in Noble Group continued their free fall on Thursday, as analysts hurriedly slashed their target price for the stock following the firm's shock loss for the first quarter. Its bonds followed a similar trajectory, tumbling on fears that the commodity trader might have problems meeting its debt obligations. The company's shares crashed another 24 per cent, or 21 cents, to 66.5 Singapore cents on Friday, reaching a new 15-year low just a day after a record 32 per cent plunge. Its 6.75 per cent bonds due 2020 fell to trade at about 54 cents on the dollar for a yield of 34 per cent; they had started the week at more than 95 cents. Noble had announced after the market close on Thursday a loss of US$129.3 million despite a rise in revenue, and attributed this to a dislocation in coal markets and higher oil prices. Its founder Richard Elman told shareholders to expect a "long, hard slog" to profitability, which the company will most likely regain...

Catalist-listed Alliance Mineral Assets Limited (AMA) has secured an offtake agreement with Burwill Holdings Limited to supply the Chinese steel trading and mining firm with lithium concentrate for an initial five-year period. This marks a major milestone for AMA as it looks to start lithium production at its Bald Hill project in Western Australia by the end of this year. With this, the project has turned from being merely "a story" to reality, said its CEO Tjandra Pramoko in a phone interview with The Business Times. Under the agreement signed with BCL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Burwill, AMA will sell all of its production between March 15 next year and Dec 31, 2019 at a fixed price of US$880 a tonne for lithium oxide with a concentration of 6 per cent, according to an announcement by AMA's mining partner Tawana Resources on Wednesday. Burwill will provide prepayment of A$25 million (S$26 million), to be split equally between both AMA and Tawana. Of this,...

Magnus Energy Group sank deeper into the red in the fiscal third quarter ended March 31, with a net loss of S$1.01 million compared to a loss of S$544,000 a year ago. This came mainly on the back of weaker revenue, loss from share of results of joint ventures, and higher other operating expenses. The group's revenue tanked 38.7 per cent to S$3.3 million in the quarter and gross profit margin fell from 20 per cent a year ago to 14.5 per cent due to lower profit margin recorded from the wastewater segment. Magnus's oilfield equipment supplies and services segment, Mid-Continent Equipment Group Pte Ltd, and the latter's subsidiaries (Midcon Group) currently form the group's main core business. The overall performance of the Mid-Con Group remains weak, posing a drag on the group, Magnus said in its financial statement released on Monday. The group has extended a redeemable convertible loan in its investment in PT Hanjungin, with a view to converting the...

A former Nomura Holdings Inc bond trader said he was trained to lie to customers shortly after coming to the company in order to boost the firm's commissions. Frank DiNucci Jr said the tactics he learned included lying about where Nomura had bought or sold bonds and misrepresenting the price it had paid. DiNucci was the first witness Monday at the trial of three former Nomura colleagues, Ross Shapiro, Michael Gramins and Tyler Peters, who are accused of lying to customers about the prices of mortgage-backed securities. DiNucci told jurors in a federal courtroom in Connecticut that he learned most of the deceptive practices from Shapiro and Gramins. DiNucci said he understood that lying and deception was wrong but didn't "put two and two together" when employing the questionable tactics. "It was just commonplace on the desk," he said. "I didn't think about the reality of it when I was actually doing it." DiNucci, who worked at N...