APFT: messy announcements (2)

And the company made another announcement, correcting the mistakes noted in the previous blog post.

The way things went:

• An "interested observer" noted that the price could not be right, and informed me
• I posted a blog posting about the subject
• Most likely Bursa picked it up and notified the company
• The company (most likely the company secretary) amended the announcement, for the third time

This bags the question, how many times in the past have there been mistakes in these kind of announcements? My guess: many times.

Automating (part of) this process (probably with a link to the CDS system) should greatly help, both in the amount of work needed currently and in the quality of the announcements, avoiding the most obvious errors.

Scan Associates: which breach? (2)

Article in The Star: Scan Associates discloses reason for suspending director

Some snippets:


Scan Associates Bhd director Yeoh Eng Kong, who was suspended for more than five months to facilitate an investigation against him, had been penalised for seeking an extension of time to submit a regularisation plan without the board’s knowledge and approval.

This was the ICT security solutions company's answer to Bursa Malaysia Securities’ query on the details of Yeoh’s breach of duties as director.

Scan had suspended Yeoh as director for two months in September last year but extended the period of his suspension twice, as an investigative committee set up by the company needed more time to analyse and conclude the case against him.

The suspension was finally uplifted with effect from Feb 17, the day after the committee concluded that Yeoh had indeed breached his duties as a director.

Scan so far has not explicitly said that the investigative committee had been dissolved. One of the matters that it was supposed to probe was related to “the preparation of the company’s subsidiaries’ audited financial statements.”

In the initial announcement on Yeoh’s suspension on Sept 9 last year, Scan said the board decided to form a committee to investigate “the possible serious breach of duties of a director and the preparation of the company’s subsidiaries’ audited financial statements.”

Scan’s external auditor Baker Tilly Monteiro Heng had in June last year tendered its resignation as auditors of the company and its subsidiaries. The reasons given were the outstanding amount of professional fees and the receipt of the writ and statement of claim filed by Yeoh on May 16.


External auditor resigning, probe in the subsidiaries' audited statements, it looks like more information will be revealed down the road.

New ETFs: exotic or toxic?

Article on Bloombers website:

Singapore Readies New Exotic ETFs to Catch Taiwan, Hong Kong

A snippet:


Preparations are underway in Singapore for the first new listing of leveraged and inverse exchange-traded funds in almost eight years.

Singapore Exchange Ltd. last week published a new web page about the products, described as “a form of passive collective investment schemes (like ETFs) and structured as open-end funds,” following revised guidelines from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in August.

Singapore, along with Hong Kong, is seeking to capture a bigger share of an expanding pie through types of funds that have seen success in Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Leveraged ETFs in Taiwan, which started in 2014, now have more than $4.8 billion in assets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Daily trading of inverse and leveraged funds is more than half of Taiwan’s ETF market, said Andy Chang, president and chief executive officer of Cathay Securities Investment Trust Co.


I am seriously underwhelmed by this initiave, is this really the best the SGX can come up with to attract retail investors?

I like "long" ETFs on a certain large market with low fees very much, I use them myself if I think a market is relatively cheap and I don't have my eyes on some particular stocks in that market.

I can also imagine that an investor sometimes wants to invest in an inverse ETF without leverage, as a (partial) insurance against his portfolio of value shares going down together with the market when the market looks richly priced but the value shares still offer enough upside.

But these leveraged ETFs, I am not keen at all on them, the management fees are often much higher than the "long" only ETFs. In addition to that there are also higher expenses related to the instruments the ETFs use to create the leverage. In the longer term the fees will have a serious impact on the returns.

APFT: messy announcements

On January 17, 2017 the company announced:

On February 16, 2017 the company amended the above announcement:

Two changes, but both puzzling:

• There was no "disposal of shares via open market" done on January 4th 2017 at a price of RM 0.40. 
• It is not possible to announce on January 17th 2017 (the date of the original annnouncement) a disposal of shares in the open market to be done on February 6th 2017.

A second amendment was announced, but no changes in the above.

I guess we have to wait for a third amendment, will they get it right this time?

It all looks very amateuristic and reflects badly on the company.

Also, I like to reiterate a call to automate these kind of announcements.