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Privatisation has picked up pace this year, and is likely to continue, as acquirers - strategic investors, private equity firms and entrepreneurs - continue to target listed corporates. There have been about a dozen ongoing and completed takeout offers this year, mostly concentrated in the unloved small- to mid-cap space that is struggling with industry disruption, diminishing free float, and poor trading interest. Their aggregate market cap adds up to close to S$5 billion - albeit still a stretch to beat 2018's figure, which included Global Logistic Properties' record S$16 billion privatisation deal. Atin Kukreja, CEO of financial advisory firm Rippledot, cites low valuations, poor trading liquidity, strong corporate balance sheets, and cheap funding as the prime drivers behind the trend. "Liquidity and trading volume in the equity market is low, but they are high in the debt market. With the interest rate environment still benign, acquirers are able to ...

Sembcorp Marine chairman Mohd Hassan Marican at Tuesday's annual general meeting flagged that the company may be approaching the bottom of "a very long downcycle", and recovery could come as soon as later this year or in 2020. He also stressed that the group has shifted from fabrication and pure construction work to gradually becoming a marine engineering solutions provider, with a bias towards gas solutions. It is now doing higher-value work such as developing engineering solutions for more demanding environments, and this will be supported by its new facilities at Tuas Boulevard Yard, which has the infrastructure to allow the group faster turnaround of vessels, and larger dry docks that can do more complex jobs. "What we couldn't do before, we can now do in Tuas," he said. The group is currently head-quartered at Tanjong Kling. Asked by shareholders about the group's slim S$3 million gross profit and S$74 million net losses incurred in FY...

The first witness of the trial over 2013 penny stock crash which mopped out S$8 billion (RM24 billion) from the Singapore share market today admitted that he had practiced “front running” while placing share orders. It is understood that “front running” is a prohibited practice of entering into an equity trade to capitalise on advance knowledge of a large pending transaction that will influence the price of the underlying security. Ng Kit Kiat, a remisier with Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Securities Pte Ltd (OSPL) since 2000, admitted doing it using his wife account after receiving trading instructions from Quah Su-Ling, one of the accused person. The admission was made by Ng while he was cross-examined by Quah’s counsel Philip Fong Yeng Fatt of Eversheds Harry Elias LLP on the fourth day of the trial before High Court Judge Hoo Sheau Peng. Fong highlighted two occasions in 2013 in which Ng had placed orders ahead of orders for similar stocks instructed by Quah...

The drama continues in Day Four of the trial of John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling as Quah’s defence counsel accused the prosecution’s first witness of “inventing evidence” and engaging in the practice of front-running. Continuing in his cross-examination of OCBC Securities remisier Ng Kit Kiat, Quah’s lawyer Philip Fong in court on Friday homed in on the daily trade reports Ng sent via SMS to Soh and Quah. Fong put forward that trade summaries are meant to provide an accurate picture of the trades that were executed. But pointing out certain errors in some of these SMSes, he argued that Ng’s reports were “inaccurate”. Ng conceded that some of these mistakes could have been due to “typo error”. “My clients are very, very smart people,” Ng replied. “They would know these are typo mistake.” Fong also pointed out that these daily SMS reports were “incomplete” and did not include all the information of trades carried out. For instance, Fong said, information of sell trade...

An OCBC Securities remisier said during the ongoing penny stocks trial that market intelligence shared between brokers and clients, who then acted on the information, could push up share prices. The prosecution witness also conceded under cross-examination on Friday that he had front-run instructions from one of the accused, Quah Su-Ling, 54. Remisier Ng Kit Kiat has earlier told the court that he took instructions from Quah and her co-accused John Soh Chee Wen on trades of Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital (now Attilan Group) and LionGold Corp, collectively known as BAL from August 2012 to Oct 3, 2013. Quah and 59-year-old Soh are said to have controlled a web of 189 accounts to manipulate the market for the BAL counters, and used intermediaries and brokers like Mr Ng to operate the scheme. On Friday, the fourth day of the joint trial of the two accused, Quah's lawyer, Philip Fong, placed a spotlight on the flow of information in the market. Under questioning, Mr N...

THE lawyer for John Soh Chee Wen, the alleged mastermind in the ongoing penny stocks trial, on Thursday argued that the prosecution's first witness was coached by the investigating officer (IO). Senior Counsel N Sreenivasan, in his cross-examination of OCBC Securities remisier Ng Kit Kiat, queried the witness about his statement, in which he fingered 59-year-old Soh and co-defendant Quah Su-Ling as the ones placing unauthorised trades for accounts that belonged to a few other individuals, including Quah's mother. Quah, 54, is former chief executive of Ipco International (now renamed Renaissance United). Mr Ng said in the statement that it is likely that calls to his mobile phone from August 2012 to October 2013 contained trade instructions from the duo for the nominees' accounts. Mr Sreenivasan focused on the word "nominees", and got Mr Ng to confirm that the word was used by the IO and not the witness. Mr Ng initially said he did not think u...

OCBC Securities remisier Ng Kit Kiat testified on Wednesday that he took unauthorised trade orders from John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling, who are now standing trial in the High Court over alleged manipulation of three penny stocks Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital and LionGold Corp, collectively known as BAL. Both Malaysians, Soh and Quah are accused of orchestrating a manipulation scheme from August 2012 to October 2013, by placing   hundreds of thousands of trades through an extensive web of 189 trading accounts in the names of 60 individuals (including Quah herself) and corporations related in one way or another to the duo, co-accused Goh Hin Calm or the three companies involved in the case but controlled by Soh and Quah. Mr Ng, the first prosecution witness to take the stand, took the court through how he became the broker of former Ipco International   chief executive Quah. After that, she referred her mother, her subordinate Goh and LionGold's then-independent ...