PSE to suspend 10 firms for reportorial violations

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has threatened to suspend trading in 10 publicly-listed companies for their failure to submit last year’s annual reports as well as pay the assessed fines.

In a notice to brokers yesterday, the PSE said it would suspend starting on Monday, May 17, stock transactions in Zipporah Realty Holdings Inc., Wise Holdings Inc., Uniwide Holdings Inc., Unioil Resources & Holdings Co. Inc., Solid Group Inc., Mondragon International Phils. Inc., Forum Pacific Inc., Fil-Estate Corp., DMCI Holdings Inc. and Cyber Bay Corp.

The PSE said it would carry out the suspension unless compliance with the reportorial requirement and payment of the basic and daily fines have been made by the concerned companies.

Most of the firms included in the suspension notice were, in fact, not new in this situation, having had previous records of trading suspension in the past two to three years.

Some of these listed companies attribute the delay in the submission of their financial reports mainly to auditing problems related to their ongoing corporate rehabilitation programs, while others pin the blame on their own financial predicament.

Among the firms undergoing corporate rehabilitation and restructuring are Uniwide Holdings and Solid Group while Mondragon and Cyber Bay are struggling in their respective court battle for their assets.

Other companies in the list are hardly traded or inactive issues, mostly a result of their conversion into totally different business ventures.

Zipporah Realty changed from a mining company to a real estate holding and development firm. Forum Pacific was formerly known as Cophil Exploration and was organized primarily to engage in the exploration, development and production of petroleum and related products as well as other mineral and chemical substances until it transformed itself into a holding company to mainly engage in investing, purchasing and acquiring assets of any kind.

Unioil Resources also transformed itself from a gas and oil exploration and development company into a holding company engaged primarily in investment banking and other related concerns like equity and quasi-equity fund mobilization.