China Minzhong resumes trading after alleged fraud

SINGAPORE -- China Minzhong Food Corporation, a Singapore Exchange (SGX) mainboard-listed company, has been offered a mandatory conditional cash offer for S$1.12 ($0.88) a share after trading halt for almost a week, the company said on Monday.

The offer was made by China Minzhong's largest shareholder, Indonesian food giant PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, which firstly bought 3.9 percent of the company's shares in so-called married trades.

The Indofood has thus pushed its stake in the Chinese vegetable seller to 33.49 percent, past the threshold of 30 percent which requires it to make a general offer.

China Minzhong resumed its trading at about 3:30 on Monday afternoon after almost a week-long trading halt. It closed at S$1. 125 ($0.884), over twice of the price of S$0.53 ($0.42) when the company request for the trading halt on Aug 26.

US short-seller Glaucus Research Group released a report last Monday, alleging that China Minzhong has fabricated sales figures and has suspicious capital expenditures, etc. It expects "trading in its shares to be halted and its shares to be worthless", with target price of 0.00 Singapore dollar.

China Minzhong's shares slumped from S$1.015 to S$0.53, down 48 percent. It then halted its share since around 11:00 in the morning of last Monday.

China Minzhong said on last Monday about the alleged fraud:" The company will take all necessary steps to defend its reputation and will not hesitate to take legal action against those who put up and disseminate false or misleading statements without due regard to their truth and for the purpose of inducing others to deal in securities."

On Aug 29, the China Minzhong announced a record net profit of 755.1 million yuan ($123.4 million) for the financial year ended on June 30, up 11.1 percent on year.

It also added "most of the issues raised by Glaucus with regard to the financials of the Company were nothing new and arose out of a complete lack of understanding of the Company's business model as well as the operating environment in China. They have also failed to analyze the company's growth path over the years and have chosen to take snapshots of the Company's results at specific times."

China Minzhong continued a rebuttal on last Sunday, producing invoices and regulatory filings to defend themselves and charging that Glaucus used inappropriate documents and metrics to deliberately mislead investors.

China Minzhong, a so-called leading integrated vegetable processor, listed in SGX mainborad in 2010. Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC was one of its shareholders, which sold its 14.4 percent stake in February to Indofood.