A lawyer for Hong Kong’s securities watchdog yesterday urged a court to block the controversial privatization of telecoms giant PCCW (電訊盈科), saying it could destroy the city’s financial market.
Winston Poon (潘松輝), a barrister for the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), said PCCW had only won shareholder approval for the buyout after insurance agents were given shares on condition that they backed the privatization.
“To allow share-splitting, which creates uncertainties or chaos, may have the effect of destroying the financial market in Hong Kong,” he told the court.
PHOTO: AFP
The claims came on the final day of a High Court hearing to decide whether the deal to take the city’s largest fixed-line operator into private hands should go ahead.
Poon said two businessmen had plotted to rig a shareholder vote which approved the US$2.1 billion buyout bid, which has been a long-held dream of PCCW chairman Richard Li (李澤楷), son of one of Asia’s richest businessmen, Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠).
Poon said the plot to split shares was hatched by Francis Yuen (袁天凡), the former deputy chairman of PCCW and chief executive of the local stock exchange, and Lam Hau-wah (林孝華), a senior manager at Fortis Insurance Company (Asia).
Fortis was previously a unit of Pacific Century Regional Developments (PCRD, 盈科拓展), which is controlled by Li.
After several phone conversations between Lam and Yuen in January, Lam bought 500,000 shares in PCCW and then handed them out to his employees under the guise of a bonus.
The gift came with an agreement that the employees sign proxy shareholder voting forms, which would then be used to support the buyout, Poon said.
“As soon as they were handed the shares they signed the transfer forms and the proxy forms — even before they got their name on to the share registry,” he told the court.
Poon argues that such share-splitting “abused” a law meant to protect minority shareholders.
Vote-rigging is not an offense in Hong Kong, but if it is found that some voters had a relationship with the major shareholders, they are not counted as independent and are ineligible to vote in such shareholder meetings.
Hong Kong law requires that more than 50 percent of individual shareholders support any privatization move.
Li and PCCW have repeatedly said they had no knowledge of any vote-rigging.
Lawyers for PCCW and PCRD on Tuesday lambasted the SFC’s investigation, calling it biased, inaccurate and incomplete.
The SFC started its investigation after local investor David Webb said he had been tipped off that hundreds of Fortis insurance sales agents were offered the shares in return for voting yes to the deal.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
SHARED VALUES: The US, Taiwan and other allies hope to maintain the cross-strait ‘status quo’ to foster regional prosperity and growth, the former US vice president said Former US vice president Mike Pence yesterday vowed to continue to support US-Taiwan relations, and to defend the security and interests of both countries and the free world. At a meeting with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Pence said that the US and Taiwan enjoy strong and continued friendship based on the shared values of freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Such foundations exceed limitations imposed by geography and culture, said Pence, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time. The US and Taiwan have shared interests, and Americans are increasingly concerned about China’s
RSS