Petition filed with SEHK and Listing Committee
2 January 2015
Dear SEHK and Listing Committee,
With the New Year, we have closed the petition launched in conjunction with our submission, and we hereby submit the attached list of 349 people who signed the petition calling for retaining "1 share 1 vote" and against listing second-class shares with weaker voting rights. It is clear from this and other submissions that you face overwhelming opposition to messing with the most fundamental rights of shareholders.
All that remains is for the Listing Committee to drop this matter and focus instead on improving market quality, not degrading it and facilitating easier abuse of minority shareholders. Here are just 4 of the issues that you have failed to deal with:
- Why are controlling shareholders still allowed to vote in the elections of independent directors, who are supposed to be independent of the controller?
- What happened to quarterly financial reporting, which you first proposed in 1998 and again in 2002 and 2007? Isn't it about time we caught up with Mainland China, Singapore, most of Asia and GEM and required our main board companies to just do it?
- What happened to strengthening pre-emptive rights by reducing the general mandate to issue new shares without offering them to existing shareholders?
- Why do you still allow deep-discount open offers, which force shareholders to choose between paying up or being massively diluted without being able to sell their entitlements?
Regards
David Webb
Editor, Webb-site.com
© Webb-site.com, 2015
Organisations in this story
Topics in this story
- Independent Non-Executive Directors
- Pre-emption rights/ general mandate
- Quarterly financial reporting
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