Suspending trading a necessary evil, but more visibility can help long waits

THE Singapore Exchange's (SGX) approach to trading suspensions is balanced on the whole, although more can be done to improve the visibility for investors in long-drawn out cases.

There are currently 41 stocks on SGX that are considered long-suspended, which are defined as counters that have not been trading for at least a year. That is the highest number of long-suspended stocks in the three years that SGX has reported the statistic, and means that the shares of about 5 per cent, or one in 20, of SGX's listed companies have not been trading for the past year.

Given that price discovery is one of the most important functions of a stock market, the relatively high percentage for SGX is not ideal. But that percentage may be hard to avoid.