Wong Kar King, managing director and controlling shareholder of Advanced Holdings BLZ , voted against a capital reduction and cash distribution plan, as he was mulling a potential investment.
The proposed investment came about after the company's board put forward the proposal and before the EGM was held on Sept 29.
Under the plan, each Advanced Holdings shareholder would receive a cash distribution of 23.2 cents, in a bid by the company to reduce its capital and account for the accumulated losses of more than $15 million as at Dec 31 2022 over the years.
Under this plan, Wong would personally receive $9.6 million, based on his stake of more than 41.4 million shares.
However, the proposal did not go through, with 81.01% of the shares voting against, outnumbering the 18.99% shares in favour.
At the EGM held on Sept 29, Wong apparently left halfway as "he was not feeling well".
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At a subsequent meeting with the rest of the board, Wong said he had "pondered hard" but chose "at the time of voting" at the EGM to vote against.
In response to queries put forth by SGX and investors' grouping SIAS, Advanced Holdings says that Wong "was made aware of certain business and / or investment opportunities and had preliminary discussions to explore these opportunities, which would require capital."
"Given the impending EGM date, Wong did not have the latitude to analyse and review such opportunities in full."
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Therefore, Wong, believing that is in the "best interests" of Advanced Holdings to retain the capital until these opportunities can be fully reviewed by the board.
"Retaining the capital in the company would thus provide more options than proceeding with the cash distribution, which remains an option should there be no conclusive outcome on the other opportunities," the company states.
Advanced Holdings closed at 16 cents on Oct 4, up 8.11% for the day.
