DSC said to be on regulators’ radar

KUALA LUMPUR: Market regulators are believed to be looking at the trading authenticity in DSC Solutions Bhd, an unprofitable company listed on the Bursa Malaysia ACE Market.
Bursa Malaysia has questioned the company twice since late last month on the sudden spike in its trading volume and price.

The market regulators are said to be extra vigilant now, having seen how excessive trading on selected penny stocks brought the Singapore Exchange Ltd (SGX), Southeast Asia’s biggest bourse, to its knees in early October.

The slump in Asiasons Capital Ltd, Blumont Group Ltd and LionGold Corp erased US$6.9 billion (RM22.2 billion) in market value.

Subsequently, value of equities traded on SGX plummeted to a two-year low last month.
The average value of shares transacted fell to S$914 million (RM2.43 billion) last month from S$1.3 billion a year earlier, data compiled by Bloomberg revealed.

The Securities Commission (SC) has declined to comment when asked about the status of the DSC investigation and if there was
any activity that breached the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007.

Breaching the Act can result in imprisonment of not more than 10 years and a fine of not less than RM1 million. False trading, market rigging and market manipulation are among the illegal activities under the Act.

For DSC, it has been a frantic period, with its stock price becoming volatile and its shareholding structure seeing important changes.

Changes at the shareholders level started in September last year when Choy Douglas Arthur emerged as a substantial shareholder with a 9.09 per cent stake.

There is not much information on Choy’s investment activities, except that when Christian Kwok-Leun Yau Heilesen, a Danish investor based in Hong Kong, emerged in DVM Technologies Bhd in 2011, Choy’s name was proposed for a directorship in the company.

The 29-year-old Heilesen was the winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2008. In 2011, for a short while, DVM shares surged to 25.5 sen from 10.8 sen.

Heilesen sold DVM and subsequently emerged in GPRO Bhd and Industronic Bhd, among others.

Earlier in February, Choy ceased to be a substantial shareholder in DSC. In April, long-time shareholder DSC Systems Pte Ltd also quit as major shareholder.

On November 6, Datuk Jacky Pang Chow Huat emerged as a substantial shareholder and was named executive director. DSC founder Seah Liang Chiang then ceased to be a substantial shareholder.

Pang is better known as one of the key shareholders in Sanichi Technology Bhd.

Sanichi shares saw a sudden pick-up in trading volume and price on Friday. It was the seventh most actively-traded stock, rising 1.5 sen to 10 sen.

Alongside Pang, new additions to the DSC board were Muhammad Radhi Azizan, a former prosecuting officer at SC, and Datuk Ahmad Said Hamdan, who in 2009 was named as the first chief commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

DSC and sanichi linked