Several firms stumble, tarnish credibility in rush to get listed
To err is human, but a string of mistakes is hurting the credibility of some of the initial public offerings that have been falling over each other to take advantage of all the hot money in town.
At least four companies have had to issue clarification notices or addendums in the past month for errors in their thick prospectuses or listing documents.
The latest is PCD Stores (Group), which cut its market capitalisation by a quarter to between HK$1.56 billion and HK$1.9 billion.
The correct figure, on page 20 under the table headed 'offer statistics', should be between HK$6.6 billion and HK$8 billion.
If the mainland department store messed up this very important figure, it makes you wonder if the company's staff should be out checking all the price tags in its shops.
At the other extreme was Mobi Development, which overstated its expected proceeds by 100 times to HK$51.03 billion.
The correct figure on page 175 of the mobile technology firm's prospectus should be a humble HK$510.3 million.
That one was a no-brainer - even China Mobile might not be able to raise that much capital in its upcoming A-share offer.
Then we have China Longyuan Power Group, the fourth-hottest listing this year, which overstated the shares of major shareholder Guodian by four million in Appendix X on page 188.
The firm, which will list on Thursday, only discovered the error after it had attracted HK$200 billion worth of retail interest.
Finally, there was Fantasia Holdings Group, which admitted two typographical errors in its 462-page prospectus - both in the addresses of website domains.
Misleading information contained in the listing document of Asian Citrus caused quite a stir last week when trading in its shares had to be suspended a couple of hours into its debut.
Many of investors bought Asian Citrus shares at above HK$50 because they failed to factor in a 10-for-one stock split earlier into the orange grower's net asset value of 37.30 yuan (HK$42.33) as of June.
Shares of Asian Citrus closed yesterday at HK$7.02.
We know companies are keen to jump on the hot listing bandwagon at the moment but given the vast amounts of cash being raised, surely the budgets could extend to employing a couple of readers and checkers.
Odds against Ma rising
The market is hot, but Ma is not.
We are talking about Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou (below), whose ruling Kuomintang lost political market share to its main opposition, the Democratic Progressive Party, in mid-term local elections on the island over the weekend.
The results were reflected in the re-election trading market, too.
The odds of Ma being re-elected president in 2012 fell below 50 per cent for the first time since May, according to a university prediction market.
On a scale from NT$0 to NT$100, the probability of Ma winning such a bid was, according to bidders, NT$48.40, the Centre for Prediction Market at National Chengchi University said.
The re-election market, launched in April, attracted 860,000 bids.
Barbecued kangaroo, anyone?
From the land down under that tried to foist the Vegemite iSnack2.0 on an extremely unimpressed public comes another controversy over food.
The Australian Advertising Standards Bureau has received a complaint about the introduction of 'BBQ Coat of Arms' flavoured crisps to the country. For the uninitiated, that's barbecued kangaroo and emu, the two animals on Australia's coat of arms.
It emerged as one of the four finalists in a competition to find a new variety of potato crisps - the other three were late-night kebab, Caesar salad and buttered popcorn flavoured.
The complaint said the kangaroo and emu flavour was 'degrading' to native wildlife and would trivialise the plight of creatures already facing habitat destruction, illegal hunting and disease.
'It implies that it is perfectly OK to kill kangaroos and emus just for fun,' it added.
But crisps-maker Smith's rejected the charge, saying the new crisps celebrated Australia's heritage, and the advertising watchdog threw out the complaint.
Lai See reckons Smith's should launch an animal-oriented line of crisps for Hong Kong. How about civet cat and barking deer flavour?