Clarification on Alliance Healthcare’s response to SGX query

In our article “Compliance with listing rules is still poor” (Business Times, January 14, 2020), we mentioned that Catalist-listed Alliance Healthcare had simply referred to its original announcement in responding to five questions in a query from SGX about its proposed plan to buy a loss-making startup, and did not offer any additional information beyond the initial announcement.

It has since been brought to our attention that the two announcements relating to the proposed acquisition and the response to SGX’s query by Alliance Healthcare on December 19, 2019 were made two minutes apart. Following clarification by the sponsor, we understand that the original acquisition announcement (as published) had already incorporated the information requested by the exchange in its questions to the company based on a draft announcement.

We believe that the company could have explained this in the response to the query or they could have pointed to the specific parts of the response that deal with the queries. Nevertheless, we now understand that the company had provided additional information on the proposed transaction in responding to the SGX query and appreciate the sponsor reaching out to us to clarify the situation.