Tatung Co (大同) shares yesterday plunged by the maximum daily limit of 10 percent to NT$18.90, the lowest in three months, after the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) on Tuesday evening changed the company’s classification to a full-delivery stock effective tomorrow.
The TWSE’s move follows the company’s failure to give a clear and satisfactory explanation of why it deprived dozens of shareholders of their voting rights during a board election at the annual shareholders’ meeting on Tuesday morning.
Under the exchange’s regulations, investors are not allowed to engage in margin trading of a full-delivery stock, TWSE spokeswoman Rebecca Chen (陳麗卿) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
Photo: Kelson Wang, Taipei Times
Chen dismissed speculation that the punishment would benefit Tatung management as minority shareholders would find it more difficult to buy the shares.
She said it is a warning to investors that this is a company with high governance risks and they should think twice before buying its shares.
“We demanded that Tatung clarify the dispute at its shareholders’ meeting, but it failed to give a satisfactory answer,” Chen said. “Tatung spent more time explaining its decision to block some shareholders’ voting rights, but the company ignored the fact that it is not a judge nor a government agency.”
“Tatung has set a wrong example of corporate governance,” she added.
Categorizing a company’s stock as full-delivery shares is the third-most severe form of punishment from the TWSE, after suspension of trading and delisting, according to the exchange’s regulations.
Such a punishment is usually meted out to companies with a per-share book value of less than NT$5 or have problematic financial statements, Chen said.
The punishment for Tatung reflects the exchange’s observation that it had seriously breached shareholders’ rights, she said.
TWSE would not relax its punishment until the company clarifies the dispute around the controversial board election, Chen said.
Vivian Tsai (蔡玉真), a Tatung shareholder and a media personality, led a group of 30 Tatung shareholders at a rally outside the Securities and Futures Bureau yesterday.
The group was petitioning the Financial Supervisory Commission to order Tatung to hold a new board election.
The demise of the coal industry left the US’ Appalachian region in tatters, with lost jobs, spoiled water and countless kilometers of abandoned underground mines. Now entrepreneurs are eyeing the rural region with ambitious visions to rebuild its economy by converting old mines into solar power systems and data centers that could help fuel the increasing power demands of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. One such project is underway by a non-profit team calling itself Energy DELTA (Discovery, Education, Learning and Technology Accelerator) Lab, which is looking to develop energy sources on about 26,305 hectares of old coal land in
Taiwan’s exports soared 56 percent year-on-year to an all-time high of US$64.05 billion last month, propelled by surging global demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing and cloud service infrastructure, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) called the figure an unexpected upside surprise, citing a wave of technology orders from overseas customers alongside the usual year-end shopping season for technology products. Growth is likely to remain strong this month, she said, projecting a 40 percent to 45 percent expansion on an annual basis. The outperformance could prompt the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and
Netflix on Friday faced fierce criticism over its blockbuster deal to acquire Warner Bros Discovery. The streaming giant is already viewed as a pariah in some Hollywood circles, largely due to its reluctance to release content in theaters and its disruption of traditional industry practices. As Netflix emerged as the likely winning bidder for Warner Bros — the studio behind Casablanca, the Harry Potter movies and Friends — Hollywood’s elite launched an aggressive campaign against the acquisition. Titanic director James Cameron called the buyout a “disaster,” while a group of prominent producers are lobbying US Congress to oppose the deal,
Two Chinese chipmakers are attracting strong retail investor demand, buoyed by industry peer Moore Threads Technology Co’s (摩爾線程) stellar debut. The retail portion of MetaX Integrated Circuits (Shanghai) Co’s (上海沐曦) upcoming initial public offering (IPO) was 2,986 times oversubscribed on Friday, according to a filing. Meanwhile, Beijing Onmicro Electronics Co (北京昂瑞微), which makes radio frequency chips, was 2,899 times oversubscribed on Friday, its filing showed. The bids coincided with Moore Threads’ trading debut, which surged 425 percent on Friday after raising 8 billion yuan (US$1.13 billion) on bets that the company could emerge as a viable local competitor to Nvidia
RSS