Hong Kong's securities regulator put an indefinite trading halt on the shares of Chinese timber supplier Superb Summit International Group, a company that shortseller Muddy Waters questioned the accounts of in a report issued last year. The Hong Kong stock exchange said in a statement on Tuesday that the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) had invoked a rarely used provision which says the regulator can halt trading in a stock if it believes a company has given false, incomplete or misleading information, has failed to comply with SFC rules, or if the SFC deems it is in the public interest to do so.
No specific reason was given for the SFC order. Shares of Superb Summit - which has a last-traded market value of HK$12 billion ($1.6 billion) - have been suspended since November 2014 at the request of the company following the Muddy Waters report. Company executives were not immediately available to comment on the latest halt. When a Reuters reporter visited the Hong Kong office of Superb Summit on Tuesday, he was told by an employee that the company could not accept any interviews.
The regulator declined to comment as well. Several companies that have had trading in their shares suspended have been under investigation by the SFC. The provision invoked by the SFC was also used to extend a trading halt in shares of Chinese solar technology company Hanergy Thin Film Power Group Ltd in July this year.
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