SGX RegCo stiffens its back with proposal for enhanced disclosures to drive value creation

[SINGAPORE] When Singapore Exchange Regulation (SGX RegCo) launched a public consultation last week on enhanced disclosures to promote value creation and investor engagement, its chief executive Tan Boon Gin noted that some market participants had been pushing for the frontline market regulator to take an even more prescriptive stance.

“They would like us to emulate Japan, for example, which has asked companies to disclose concrete plans to move their price-to-book values above one,” Tan said, during a media briefing. “But let us remember, Japan’s Value-Up programme has been more than a decade in the making, and Singapore is only at the beginning of this journey.”

Yet, the listing rule amendments SGX RegCo is proposing do represent a prescriptive tilt away from the raft of pro-enterprise measures announced last year – which included streamlining listing processes, adopting a more targeted approach to post-listing queries, alerts and trading suspensions, and doing away with the much hated financial watch list.