By Mak Yuen Teen

Today’s (13 February, 2020) Business Times published a letter from RHTLaw Asia LLP clarifying certain points in our article “Sponsors’ conflicts symptomatic of a bigger issue” (Business Times, February 11, 2020). The letter is reproduced below.

We wish to respond to two points in RHTLaw Asia’s letter. The first is that “Taylor Wessing and RHTLaw Asia’s joint decision to move towards a collaborative relationship in place of formal links was reached in 2019, and precedes the Notice of Compliance issued to RHT Capital”.

In our article, we said that the NOC was issued by SGX Regco on January 22, 2020 and the announcement on the parting of ways was made on January 24, 2020. This was to indicate that the relationship has changed. We made no reference to when the decision to move to a collaborative relationship was reached. January 24, 2020 was when the market was aware of the change in the relationship.

The second point in the letter is that “Roy Ling Chung Yee was never at any time a consultant of the law firm RHTLaw Taylor Wessing and has no current relationship with RHTLaw Asia LLP.” Our article had stated: “At Ley Choon, lead independent director Roy Ling Chung Yee is a consultant for RHT Strategic Advisory and RHT Academy. His online bio also lists him as a consultant for RHT Law Taylor Wessing Group.”

The online bio we referred to was found at INSEAD’s “KNOWLEDGE” website here: https://knowledge.insead.edu/users/royli?ct=14243 (which remains unchanged as at the time of writing of this post – February 13, 2020, 7 am).

The first paragraph of his bio states:

“Professor Roy Ling is currently a Managing Director at RL Capital Management and RL Academy. Concurrently, he serves as an Independent Board Director at 6 listed companies across Asia, as an Adjunct Professor in Finance at the EDHEC Business School and the SP Jain School of Global Management, and as a Consultant for the RHT Law Taylor Wessing Group.”

It is clear that he is listed as a consultant for RHT Law Taylor Wessing Group in his online bio, exactly as we described in our article.

We stand by what we have written in our article. While our article is about conflicts and potential conflicts involving Catalist sponsors, it also said: “To be clear, we do not consider all relationships to necessarily pose a conflict.”

However, we believe that SGX Regco should review disclosure of sponsor and non-sponsor fees, types of non-sponsor services, and other relationships between sponsors/their affiliates with sponsored issuers – if sponsors are to continue to play such an important role in the Catalist regime.

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