SIAS's Hyflux rap: A wake-up call for corporate Singapore

EARLIER this week, the Securities Investors Association (Singapore) issued a strongly-worded statement to the board of troubled water treatment firm Hyflux Ltd.

It voiced its concern that Hyflux has not addressed several issues regarding its financial position and that, after about nine months of silence, stakeholders - including creditors owed substantial amounts of money - deserve to know more about what went wrong and what the future might hold for them. Clearly, given that SIAS has been calling on Hyflux to be forthcoming with its plans and finances ever since its problems emerged last May while at the same time urging patience of the company's stakeholders to help save it from liquidation, it is SIAS' patience which now appears to have worn thin.

Included in the SIAS statement were a total of 33 questions for Hyflux's board to answer, among them justification for the generous remuneration package for the chief executive and senior management at a time when the company was suffering financially; the absence of impairments on assets now known to have been performing poorly; the valuation basis for those assets; the level of awareness among the board of the depth of the problems; and whether key personnel will be investing in the restructured entity.