THE Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) Inc. said it will complete the delisting of Calata Corp. even without a tender offer to its minority shareholders.
“Well if they don’t [undertake a tender offer] we cannot force them, we don’t have any police power,” PSE President and Chief Executive Director Ramon S. Monzon said. “But they keep talking about taking care of their small investors. So, as they say, put your money where your mouth is.”
“I think there is a disclosure already, Calata has been delisted. And we are just waiting for the terms,” Monzon said at the sidelines of the PSE’s Bell Awards of Excellence for Corporate Governance ceremony last week. “We require them to make a tender offer. So we’re requiring and waiting on their reply on how they will conduct their tender offer, if at all they will.”
The PSE decided to delist Calata after it was discovered its owner and chairman, Joseph Calata, sold shares of the company without the required disclosures for the trade. Calata also failed to disclose corporate developments within the company, according to the PSE.
The PSE said the violation ran between November 29, 2016, through June 20 for several transactions.
Calata is refusing to make a tender offer—a process that buys out other shareholders of the company—saying it will result to the breaking up of the company given the limited cash it has.
The company chairman, meanwhile, instead made an offer to its shareholders a cryptocurrency swap of their shares instead of a tender offer. Crytocurrency, the most famous of which is Bitcoin, is not being encouraged by Philippine regulators.
“It’s [the delisting] a punishment in the sense that they cannot raise money in the capital market. So that’s a punishment in itself. Before [prior to that] they can raise money from the public stockholders,” Monzon said.
Monzon added the experience of Calata would encourage listed companies to improve on their corporate governance practices and practice it in the course of their business, as the PSE recognize companies that observe good governance through its Bell Awards.
The PSE, however, decided to give the awards every two years, instead of annually as almost the same companies bag the award year after year.
“We encourage companies to have good corporate governance. We cannot force them. If they don’t want they pay the price. The investors don’t invest in them. Because investors only invest in companies where they trust and they only trust companies with good corporate governance,” Monzon said.
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57 Days of stock certificate HOSTAGE CRISIS happening in #CALATA. (57 days since upliftment request & 21 days since Avan Pabilando said she instructed their publisher to rush-release the blank certs). Wrote to PSE & to SEC for help, but to no avail. Who else can we turn to? There goes my right to sell me shares. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f2c9c3585ad62b937eab5be138bf01e67a95be16274c383b22de8dd8f7f19b3.png