No Signboard Holdings CEO charged with price rigging offences in shares buyback scheme
Signboard of No Signboard restaurant in Geylang.
SINGAPORE — The chief executive officer of restaurant operator No Signboard Holdings was charged on Thursday (July 27) with price rigging offences.
Lim Yong Sim, who is also the executive chairman of the company, is charged with three counts of false trading and market rigging.
The 46-year-old is accused of placing orders for No Signboard Holdings shares, and trades in the shares were executed through the account of Gugong — the majority shareholder of No Signboard Holdings — to push up or support the prices.
These trades were done between June 19 and June 29, 2018, as well as between Nov 30, 2018 and Jan 11, 2019. At the time, Lim was the director and majority shareholder of Gugong, said the police.
He is also accused of placing orders for the company's shares on Jan 31, 2019. Trades in the company’s corporate trading account were executed to push up or support the price of its shares, said the police.
Lim was arrested on April 30, 2019 on "reasonable suspicion” that sections of the Securities and Futures Act on false trading, market-rigging transactions and insider trading “may have been breached”, the Catalist-listed company said in a filing to the Singapore Exchange (SGX) in 2019.
The charges against Lim were filed after a joint investigation by the Commercial Affairs Department and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
If convicted, he may be jailed for up to seven years, fined up to S$250,000 or both.
According to its website, No Signboard runs three restaurants in Singapore — No Signboard Seafood in Geylang, Little Sheep Hot Pot in Orchard, and nosignboard Sheng Jian in Yishun.
Shares have been suspended from trading since Jan 24, 2022, said a company announcement to SGX on July 25.
"Shareholders and potential investors are advised to refrain from taking any action with respect to their securities in the company which may be prejudicial to their interests, and to exercise caution when dealing in the securities of the company," said the announcement. CNA
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