SunMoon Food appoints new chairman, convenes EGM to reinstate mandate for interested person transaction

FOOD distributor SunMoon Food Company has appointed James Prideaux as its new chairman, while current chairman Gary Loh Hock Chuan will become the new deputy chairman.

Mr Prideaux, 54, will also be the lead independent director.

Mr Prideaux, who is based in the UK, is a chartered accountant, and was the president of fresh fruit distributor Dole Asia Limited from 2002 to 2016. SunMoon Food Company said he has no prior experience as a director of a listed company, but that he will go for training.

The firm has appointed Ms Ng Bie Tjin, who carries the alias of Djuniarti Intan, as an independent non-executive director as well.

Ms Ng, 51, served as an executive director of finance at Datapulse Technology Ltd until November 2014, and currently holds 120,000 shares in SunMoon.

These board changes, announced on early Friday morning, took effect from Aug 31, said SunMoon.

Separately, the group said that it is planning to convene an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to seek shareholders' confirmation and approval to reinstate its 2017 interested person transaction (IPT) General Mandate.

The group had inadvertently omitted to renew this mandate, first obtained in an EGM on June 16 this year, during its annual general meeting on July 28.

Because of that, the IPT General Mandate has lapsed, and the group has been carrying out transactions with China online shopping group Shanghai Yiguo E-Commerce Co - considered to be an IPT - without any shareholders' mandate.