PHEIM Unit Trust Magic?

It must come as a surprise to many when the Singapore High Court found Pheim Asset Management & its CEO Dr Tan Chong Koay to have contravened market rigging provisions under the Securities and Futures Act by trading with the intention of creating a false or misleading appearance in the price of United Envirotech (UET) shares.

They were ordered to pay civil penalty to MAS to the tune of S$250,000 and legal costs to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

This is a landmark judgement.

Those who attempt to do year-end window dressing of therir stocks better take heed of this  I guess it will be a matter of time when Securities Commission of Malaysia and Bursa KL  will adopt this to ensure market stability on this side of the Causeway.

In the case of Pheim, Dr Tan was found to have placed large orders to buy UET shares through Pheim Malaysia from 29 December to 31 December 2004. He did this within the last half an hour of trading on each of those days.

The trades accounted for 88 per cent of all UET shares traded over the three days, causing the share price to increase by 17 per cent.

Previous media reports also said this had triggered performance bonuses totalling S$50,790 to be paid to the company.

The court ruled that Dr Tan's sole purpose of the trades was to raise and set a higher market price for UET shares.

This act of "window dressing" then led certain funds managed by the Pheim Group to outperform their respective benchmarks, said MAS in its statement.

MAS Capital Markets Group assistant managing director, Mr Leo Mun Wai, said in a statement that "fund managers should not engage in window-dressing practices that would mislead investors as to the performance of securities and the funds under their management."

He added that MAS will not hesitate to pursue perpetrators, local or foreign, who attempt to rig Singapore's capital markets.

Pheim Unit Trsut was the doyen of unit trusts for many years. Now it has to come to this.

So, after this landmark case, wouldn't you be worried about taking stakes in unit trusts?