Boy, Chinese companies in the corporate governance spotlight just can't seem to catch a break.
The latest victim of unfortunate circumstances is China Paper Holdings, which said this week that a fire from a short circuit had broken out on one of its properties and, if that was not bad enough, destroyed financial records for all of 2011 and the first eight months of 2012.
For a company that has come under fire (the metaphorical kind) for ints investment plans and fund-raising decisions; is facing a difficult year ont he profits front (or at least until reconstructed accounts can state again); and whose financial controller left on Nov. 30 "to pursue personal interests", thiis mishap is inopportune.
Could the gods be any more cruel?
..... China Paper will now have to wait an estimated four to six months - nothing short of a lifetime - to get the truth out. That is how long the company estimates it will need to reconstruct its financial records. This is awfully inconvenient.
..... The fact that a number of Chinese companies that have come under scrutiny have also had the misfortune of meeting with records-destroying accidents - Sino Techfibre and China Sun Bio-chem Technology Group being two others in recent years - shows how circumstances have conspired to make life even tougher for those already under pressure. Life can be terribly unfair.
The company just issued 907,922,418 (!) new shares due to a rights issue at SGD 0.036 (!).
This is the graph of the share price of China Paper, not a pretty sight:
