Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam Koo Accused of Stock Price Manipulation
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
15 April 2015 – 11:15am
Jung Yeon-jin
Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam Koo has been accused of allegedly manipulating stock prices in order to lower the takeover price of Kumho Industrial Co. Continue reading
‘Absconding’ i-Core boss held at last
Dwaipayan Ghosh, TNN
| Apr 17, 2015, 03.12AM IST
KOLKATA: The CID on Thursday arrested Anukul Maiti, chairman and managing director of the alleged Ponzi firm i-Core group, who was “absconding” since Saradha went bust two years ago.
Maiti, 52, was nabbed from Lords Bakery crossing on Prince Anwar Shah Road near South City mall, said CID. He is accused in a Rs 15 lakh cheating case registered on June 10 last year and also faces charges under Prize Chit and Money Circulation Banning Act. A court remanded him in 11 days’ police custody. Continue reading
https://www.moneylife.in/article/stock-manipulation-vipul/41248.html
Stock manipulation: Vipul
16 April 2015
Moneylife
Over the past one year, the stock price of Vipul shot up by 883%. Even though nearly 35% of the promoters’ shares is pledged, this does not appear to be a concern for the regulator Present on the S&P BSE Small Cap index, Vipul Ltd generates revenue from the construction and development of real estate. Over the past four quarters, this small-cap stock has generated total revenue of Rs267 crore and a net loss of Rs3.68 crore. The stock was thinly traded until a year back, with a turnover of about Rs1,000 per day in February 2014. However, the trading turnover shot up to over Rs10 lakh a day in February 2015. Over the past one year, the stock price has shot up by 883% to Rs45.90 on 1 April 2015 from Rs4.67 on 25 March 2014. Nearly 35% of the promoters’ shares have been pledged to multiple finance institutions to secure loans. The steep rise in the stock price and the high quantity of pledged shares do not appear to be a concern for the regulator.
http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/noble-dodges-accounting-queries-at-agm
http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/sound-bites-from-elman
Noble dodges accounting queries at AGM
CHAN YI WEN
18 April 2015
Business Times Singapore
Shareholders voice concerns about group’s transparency and its valuation of Yancoal
AT Noble Group’s annual general meeting here on Friday, shareholders hoping to gain clarity on the recent Iceberg Research saga were disappointed During the one-and-a-half-hour meeting, Noble’s founder and chairman Richard Elman repeatedly dodged shareholders’ queries on the group’s accounting practices, and instead steered the AGM’s focus to the resolutions on Noble’s financial statements and the reports of its directors and auditors.
Auditor raises issue on Blumont’s ability to continue as a going concern
Mindy Tan
18 April 2015
Business Times Singapore
BLUMONT Group’s independent auditor, Moore Stephens, has drawn attention to an issue that may have significant bearing on the group’s ability to continue as a going concern. Continue reading
http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/04/james-montier-who-is-cooking-the-books-the-c-score
James Montier: Who Is Cooking The Books – The C-Score
Posted By: Guest PostPosted date: April 16, 2015 02:09:30 PMIn: Value InvestingNo Comments
James Montier: Who Is Cooking The Books – The C-Score via Value Investing Insight
In good times, few focus on such ‘mundane’ issues as earnings quality and footnotes. However, this lack of attention to ‘detail’ tends to come back and bite investors in the arse during bad times. There are notable exceptions to this generalization. The short sellers tend to be amongst the most fundamentally driven investors. Indeed, far from being rumor mongers, most short sellers are closer to being the accounting police. To aid investors in assessing the likelihood of accounting shenanigans, I have designed the C-score. When combined with measures of overvaluation, this score is particularly useful at identifying short candidates. Continue reading
Deals Potion Tunneling Fraud:
http://www.chinaknowledge.com/Newswires/News_Detail.aspx?type=1&cat=CMP&NewsID=%2040165
Hopu, Temasek among investors in Chinese juicer Asian Citrus
Eight investors, including Hopu Investment Management and Singaporean SWF Temasek Holdings, have purchased HK$1.55 billion ($200 million) worth of shares in Asian Citrus, the largest orange plantation owner and orange producer in China, to provide the company with capital needed to buffer its acquisition of BPG Food & Beverages Holdings Ltd. Asian Citrus announced last month that it would purchase BPG, a leading supplier of tropical fruit juice concentrates in the Mainland, which had been backed by Lunar Capital.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/marketreport/11540490/Asian-Citrus-investors-stricken-by-infection.html Asian Citrus investors stricken by infection Shares in the orange plantation group tumble on news of citrus greening outbreak The Aim-listed company lost more than a fifth of its value on Wednesday Photo: Andrea Jones By Ben Martin 7:12PM BST 15 Apr 2015 Investors in Asian Citrus were pulped after the Chinese oranges business revealed that one of its plantations had been struck by a deadly disease. Shares in the Aim-listed company tumbled 2p, or 23.9pc, to 6.375p on the announcement that it had discovered Huanglongbing (HLB), better known as citrus greening disease, in trees at its Xinfeng plantation in Jiangxi province. Continue reading
Glaucus Research Group California LLC initiates coverage on Delaware-Issued 2018 and 2019 Corporate Bonds of Rolta with a Strong Sell rating
Rolta India Limited (“Rolta” or the Company) is an information technology company with operations primarily in India and North America. In 2013 and 2014, Rolta issued an aggregate of US$ 500 million of junk bonds (the Junk Bonds), which are due in 2018 and 2019, and have attracted investors by offering tempting yields.
Based on the evidence and analysis presented in this report, we believe that Rolta has fabricated its reported capital expenditures in order to mask that it has materially overstated its EBITDA. The margin for error is narrowing: Roltas net debt has risen from US$ 319mm at FYE 2011 to US$ 740mm in Q3 2015 and the Company has almost nothing to show for its highly suspicious spending.
We believe that in reality, Roltas business does not generate free cash flow and that Rolta cannot repay foreign bondholders without refinancing. Indeed, we suspect Rolta approached foreign bond markets because it was unable to borrow in India. Ultimately, we believe that bondholders and ratings agencies have failed to price in evidence that Rolta has materially misstated its financial performance and the risk that Rolta will default on its Junk Bonds. We value the bonds at the recovery value of the offshore assets, which we estimate to be USD 0.16 on the dollar.
http://webb-site.com/articles/FaRCical.asp
Putting the FRC in Farcical
16th April 2015
All is not well at the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), HK’s auditor investigator, which would also like (correctly, in our view) to take disciplinary matters away from the self-regulatory HK Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Browsing through freshly released annual reports last Friday (10-Apr-2015), we came upon the 2014 annual report of China Yunnan Tin Minerals Group Co Ltd (CYTM, 0263). This is a member of what we call the “Chung Nam Network” of companies that we would never own, so it won’t surprise you to know that its main assets consist of shares in other companies in the network. In 2014, CYTM booked net gains of HK$330.5m on its portfolio, and at the year end it had the following financial assets held as current assets, shown in note 24 of the audited financial statements:
Now, read the words we highlighted carefully. It states that CYTM’s holding in Heritage International Holdings Limited (Heritage, 0412) is more than 10% of CYTM’s total assets, but represents 0.03% of the ordinary shares of Heritage. “FVTPL” is accounting-speak for “Fair Value Through Profit or Loss” and means that the listed shares are valued at market prices at the year-end.
CYTM had total assets of HK$1488.6m, so 10% of that is HK$148.86m, so that implies that the stake in Heritage is at least HK$148.86m. However, if it is only 0.03% of Heritage, then that implies that Heritage had a year-end market value of at least HK$496.2 billion, making it bigger than say, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. In fact, although we regard Heritage as a bubble stock, its market value at 31-Dec-2014 was HK$6.48bn, nowhere near the implied figure. So CYTM’s stake can’t have been 0.03%, and must have been more like 3% of Heritage, a stake that would be substantially harder to liquidate in a hurry, so the error is material to readers of the accounts, particularly investors. Continue reading
AsianExtractor: Unearthing Accounting Fraud in Asia 