CEO: Noble could have been more transparent earlier on

Singapore

NOBLE Group is doing the right thing, but it did not do it right. That was essentially what the commodities trader's chief executive officer Yusuf Alireza seemed to be acknowledging at a forum on Wednesday, in which he stood firm on its valuation methods but conceded that Noble could have been more transparent earlier on.

"In hindsight, I should have been more forceful with the board about supporting more transparency, because I think if we had more transparency up front we'd be less exposed," he said at a panel discussion in response to a question on what he thought he could have done better in dealing with apparent short-seller attacks. "It's the lesser of two evils. On the one hand, we can provide less transparency and be confident that our competitors will not know more about our business. On the other hand, if we don't provide the transparency we can expose ourselves to this kind of attacks."