Imperial Pacific stress high shareholding concentration issue resolved

Hong Kong-listed casino operator Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd. told the Hong Kong bourse on Friday that the issue of high shareholding concentration in a small number of shareholders has no longer been the case since at least November 30 last year. Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) had previously warned against this situation as it could lead to a substantial fluctuation in the company’s share price.
In its Friday filing, Imperial Pacific said that on January 19 it had completed its investigation into the shareholding structure of the company, which shows that the major shareholder Inventive Star Ltd. held 90,854,629,280 of total issued shares, or 64.68 per cent of the entire issued share capital as at November 30. Inventive Star Ltd. is wholly owned by casino investor Ms. Cui Li Jie.
In an announcement filed last month, Imperial Pacific revealed that Inventive Star Ltd. has already decreased its shares from 75 per cent of the entire issued share capital to 64.6 per cent.
This announcement followed SFC’s warning issued in July saying that the company’s major shareholder Inventive Star, along with 18 other shareholders, held 92.6 per cent of the issued shares of Imperial Pacific – a condition that investors should be wary of as the price of the shares could fluctuate substantially.
In Imperial Pacific’s Friday filing, the company noted that while Inventive Star held 64.68 per cent of the then entire issued share capital, public shareholders owned 35.4 per cent of the entire issued share capital in the firm. Among the public shareholders, the group of these 18 largest shareholders (excluding Inventive Star) collectively held 17.71 per cent of the entire issued share capital as at end-November.
The company, which runs a casino resort project on Saipan Island, said that the closing prices of the company were between HK$0.158 and HK$0.26 in the past six months – a level that the company deemed consistent with the then market condition and in line with the trend of the Hang Seng Index at that time.
“The company’s shares have been traded at a relatively steady price and there has not been any major fluctuation in the company’s share price above and beyond the overall market volatility in recent months,” Imperial Pacific stated in the Friday filing.
‘The company is of the view that even if the company’s shareholding was highly concentrated as at July 15, 2014, such issue is no longer present at least since November 30 last year,’ Imperial Pacific wrote.