The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) will from Monday, August 28, suspend the trading activities of five listed companies on the Exchange.
The managers of the domestic bourse say the decision is due to the failure of the said companies to meet their continuing listing obligations despite several promptings to do so.
The five companies are African Champion Industry Limited (ACI), Clydestone (Ghana) Limited as well as Golden Web Limited.
The remaining are the Pioneer Kitchenware Limited and Transaction Solutions Limited (TRANSOL).
A statement announcing their suspension and sighted by Citi Business News indicates that the five companies have failed to meet their continuing listing obligations in spite of several promptings to do so.
The obligations; the GSE explains include; failure to submit financial reports, non-payment of annual listing fees, failure to conduct Annual General Meeting, among others.
According to the Ghana Stock Exchange, the suspension of trading in the said companies will be in force until September 8, 2017 which is the deadline for the companies to rectify the anomalies.
Failure to do so will attract further sanctions as per the GSE listing rules.
The action by the managers of the GSE comes after the suspension of trading if UT shares due to the collapse of the bank.
UT Bank had also been complicit in similar offenses which led to its suspension in January this year.
Even though many have criticized the Stock Exchange of not being proactive enough to reverse the situation, the Managing Director of the Exchange, Mr. Kofi Yamoah insisted that the management had been in constant talks with the relevant authorities on the matter.
“We wrote to them and met them several times about their plans for providing the information that hadn’t come… Anytime we write, we copy the Banking supervision of the Bank of Ghana because they are the first regulators of the sector that UT Bank was operating and the SEC was also kept in the loop of all these discussions.”
“The Bank of Ghana asked us to collaborate closely in this arrangement because they didn’t want the stability of the financial system to be disrupted so we had to collaborate closely with the Bank of Ghana in all theses. There are several meetings we had with the Banking Supervision and with the hierarchy of UT Bank itself,” Mr. Yamoah added.
It is unclear what the impact of this move will mean for the stock market but some analysts have pointed to instances of panic reaction from other shares on the bourse.
As at the close of trading on Friday, August 25, 2017, the share prices of the companies were as follows;
African Champion Industry Limited (ACI) – 1 pesewa; Clydestone (Ghana) Limited -3 pesewas; Golden Web Limited – 1 pesewa.
Pioneer Kitchenware Limited – 5 pesewas and Transaction Solutions Limited (TRANSOL) – 3 pesewas.
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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
