'Singapore may have been able to prioritise shareholders less in the past. It shouldn’t count on always being so lucky.'
Four years after it was taken off the Singapore Exchange as part of a debt restructuring, regulators have fined Noble S$12.6 million for publishing misleading financial information.
That sum seems paltry given the scale of Noble’s collapse. Last month alone, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined an insurer US$50 million for not properly disclosing fees to annuity investors, while the UK Financial Conduct Authority would have imposed a £37.9 million penalty over misleading statements leading to the collapse of Carillion Plc, had the firm not already been in liquidation.
The official words strike the right note, but giving a light nudge to the stable door now, years after the horse has bolted, strikes a discordant tone. As early as February 2015, Iceberg Research, a short seller run by a former Noble credit analyst, was citing issues with the marketing agreements that formed the core of last week's fine.
There was a point around the time of Noble’s 1997 initial public offering when it looked like that might change. Jardines itself had moved its public listings away from Hong Kong ahead of the city’s handover to China. Singapore could have seen its share market as a foundation stone for its aspirations to be a regional financial center — a common dream of fast-growing economies, even if they have little need for the capital raising and allocation services that a vibrant stock exchange can bring.
Some 320,000 people are now employed in Singapore’s wholesale trade sector, contributing 17% of gross domestic product. When the Global Trader Programme was set to lapse last year after an initial 20-year run, the government quietly extended it to 2026.
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