KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 11): Shares in Wintoni Group Bhd shed nearly 5.2% in the morning trades on news that its entire board was resigned ahead of an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) today.

 

At 12.30pm midday break, the stock narrowed its losses to settle at 28 sen, still down one sen or 3.45% after some 2.25 million shares traded. 

 

Trading of the counter has been very volatile over the past year. The counter, which was trading at 7 sen on Jan 2 earlier this year, has shot up 300% since to settle at its current price, which gave it a market capitalisation of RM143.64 million. 

 

The industrial automation systems services provider told stock exchange yesterday, its chairman Datuk Khairuddin Mat Yusof, together with two executive directors, including Datuk Tey Por Yee, plus four independent directors and chief executive officer Choong Siew Meng, have all resigned. 

 

Accordingly, the company has appointed former Agriculture and Agro-based Industry deputy minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shariff Omar, six directors and two executive directors to the board. 

 

The boardroom changes was the following of ten minority shareholders of the ACE Market-listed company, who had requisitioned for an EGM to remove the whole board last month. 

 

Yap Kok Weng is the single largest shareholder in Wintoni with a stakeholding of 19.77% (as at May 15 this year), followed by Goodunited Ltd (10.16% - as at March 12, 2014), and Tey (4.5% as at May 15 this year), according to Bloomberg. 

 

Earlier this year in May, Wintoni’s external auditor Messrs SJGrant Thornton had issued a qualified opinion on the company’s audited annual accounts — for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2014, as they had yet to “physically sight” some assets of the company based in the United States worth RM3.7 million.

 

However, Wintoni’s latest quarterly result announcement did not mention anything about the group having an operation in the US.