Singapore Exchange Ltd has to pay closer attention to the accounting of companies with large operations in China, the bourse’s chief regulatory officer, Tan Boon Gin, wrote in a column on the company’s Web site yesterday.
Several accounting issues have come to the market operator’s attention, Tan wrote, including customers claiming “compensation more than 10 times the value of the original sales,” sharp increases in trade receivables and significant prepayments.
The column was “based on public information” and the exchange would not name specific companies, SGX head of media communications Patricia Choo wrote in an e-mail.
Corporate defaults and accounting scandals are mounting in China as the world’s second-largest economy grows at its slowest pace in 25 years. Of the 769 companies listed on Southeast Asia’s biggest bourse as of last month, 123 are from China, exchange data show.
During the global financial crisis of 2008, several Chinese companies reported financial irregularities, with many ending up bankrupt, Tan wrote.
“These commercial disputes, such as claims and write-offs, can result in a complete depletion of the company’s entire cash balances or its retained earnings,” Tan wrote.
“The board of directors owes a fiduciary duty to shareholders to act in their interests and to safeguard the interest and assets of the company,” Tan wrote.
Accountants reviewing the books of Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd (佳兆業集團), which became the first Chinese developer to miss payments on dollar bonds this year, found that the company’s debt was double what it had reported in its public accounts.
In 2009, Chinese waterworks company Sino-Environment Technology Group Ltd (中華環保科技集團) defaulted on bonds denominated in Singapore dollars amid questions over its cash transaction reporting.
That same year, Celestial Nutrifoods Ltd (天圜營養集團) also went into bankruptcy as a result of accounting issues, leaving bonds sold in the city-state unpaid as well.
“The quality of financial disclosure in China is not as good as in developed markets,” said Clement Chong, a senior credit analyst at NN Investment Partners in Singapore. “Not all companies are transparent. Often, it’s a matter of asking the right questions of management and exercising caution when analyzing their financial positions.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained