KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Raymond Chan Boon Siew, who made headlines after emerging in Harvest Court Industries Bhd Naim Indah Corp Bhd and more recently Metronic Global Bhd, yesterday emerged as a substantial shareholder of Ariantec Global Bhd, a unit of Metronic.
Ariantec, an ACE Market-listed information technology (IT) firm, was issued an unusual market activity (UMA) query by Bursa Malaysia yesterday due to the sharp rise in its share price and trading volume. Ariantec said it was unaware of the cause of the UMA.
Ariantec was the most active counter with 515.66 million shares traded, representing about 91% of its 568.75 million share base.
It hit a four-year high of 20.5 sen yesterday and ended at 20 sen, a 73.9% increase from its close of 11.5 sen on Monday. The stock, actively traded since March 16, has seen its price quadruple since closing at five sen on March 15.
Trading in the company’s shares was suspended from 4.05pm yesterday and will resume today.
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| Chan: We have a lot of strong supporters from Sabah who follow me throughout. |
A filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday showed that Chan has a 5.1% stake in Ariantec after he bought 26.5 million shares from the open market. He now has a direct interest of 29 million shares in the company.
On April 3, Metronic acquired 5.8 million shares in Ariantec, raising its direct stake to 13.15% or 74.78 million shares.
What Chan plans to do with Ariantec is anyone’s guess.
The surge in Ariantec’s share price preceded Chan’s entry, similar to what happened in the other companies he had bought into.
On Feb 8, Naim Indah Corp shares surged about 170% before Chan surfaced. The stock hit limit-up, adding 31 sen to 49 sen, prior to Chan and five other individuals emerging as shareholders of the company. Of the 22.8% held by the six of them, Chan has the largest block of 12.11%.
Similarly in the last quarter of 2011, Harvest’s share price increased more than 16-fold to RM2 from 12 sen just before Chan surfaced.
Chan has since awarded more than RM1 billion worth of jobs to Harvest.
“We have a lot of strong supporters from Sabah who follow me throughout. They are very rich individuals, investors from the palm oil industry,” Chan said in an interview with The Edge, explaining the surge when he surfaces in a company.
This article appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, April 18, 2012.