Lung, Karl Hak Kau 龍克裘

For insider dealing in 2007. After the MMT wrongly cleared them in 2015, the SFC took the case all the way to the Court of Final Appeal and won.

The company was taken private in 2014.

Tom Tang Chung Yen, former Meadville Chairman and brother of former Chief Secretary Henry Tang, is cleared because the MMT is not satisfied that he intended to tip her off. The appendix (PDF p140) reveals 5 years of delays by the Department of Justice from 2013-2018 before deciding that a criminal prosecution could not be brought.

We don't disagree with the finding, but we annotate errors in the report regarding the outcome of an open offer. The MMT finds that when the duo sold shares in 2007, the information was no longer material, as the company was publicly known to be in difficulty and the stock was trading on its shell potential. Also, the alleged loss avoided becomes a profit avoided if the open offer had been taken up. Incidentally, Warderly is now known as Fullshare (0607) and in our view it is a bubble stock on 9x NAV, part of which is shares in another bubble stock, Zall (2098) which trades around 4x NAV.

The firm is now Reorient Group Ltd (0376). The MMT makes no finding on Lu Ruifeng, who was hospitalised outside the jurisdiction. It finds that 2 of the defendants knew negative price-sensitive information but that this was not a factor when they sold their shares during the 2007 market bubble. Comment: if the same events were to happen today, then the board would have a statutory obligation to disclose the inside information.