By Mak Yuen Teen

Two days ago, on June 23, I wrote a post here titled “Healthway Medical Corporation: AGM should be delayed”. The article pointed out that as a result of the “corrigendum” published by  Healthway Medical Corporation (HMC) on June 22, its AGM scheduled for June 24 should be delayed. This is because the deadlines for registering for the live webcast of the AGM and to vote by proxy have passed. The company has since proposed to adjourn its AGM to July 6, subject to approval from SGX.

The “corrigendum” was due to the incorrect disclosures for two directors who are standing for election/re-election. One of those directors is the independent chairman, Mr Sin Boon Ann.  He failed to disclose his relationship with a substantial shareholder and his business relationship with the proposed new director standing for election. To me, such disclosure lapses are unacceptable.

Sadly, Mr Sin seems to have made disclosure lapses a habit. Today (June 25) at 7.48 pm, Sarine Technologies announced that Mr Sin has been appointed as an independent director. According to the disclosure template,  Mr Sin’s expertise and experience will fill the need for a “qualified Corporate Governance and Compliance expert”. The company may have to continue looking for one.

According to the announcement, Mr Sin is 61 years of age.  However, when he was appointed to The Trendlines Group as an independent director a week ago, on June 17, he was said to be 62 years of age. I am not aware of time travel becoming available on SGX.

But that is not all. The template shows that he is presently on seven other listed boards. One of these is Datapulse Technology. However, Mr Sin had stepped down from Datapulse Technology on November 13, 2019.  In fact, when he was appointed at Trendlines a week ago (when he was apparently a year older), Datapulse Technology was listed as a past directorship.

The announcement template for Sarine Technologies also failed to disclose his directorship at Trendlines.

It would appear that the correct number of current listed directorships for Mr Sin is eight in total. In addition, he is also on the board of eight other unlisted companies, assuming these are correctly disclosed.  Perhaps such an extensive list of commitments is taking its toll.

I would urge SGX Regco to take a more serious view of disclosure lapses before the market loses all credibility.