ATV documents can go to tycoon
ATV's executive director yesterday lost an appeal to block another director from passing the broadcaster's financial and operations documents to a shareholder.
James Shing Pan-yu failed to convince the Court of Appeal to impose conditions on director Kevin Tsai Shao-chung, the son of Taiwanese snack tycoon and ATV shareholder Tsai Eng-meng, to limit his use of the documents to the purposes of discharging his duties as a member of ATV's board of directors.
Anson Wong, a lawyer for Shing, argued the documents should not be passed to Kevin Tsai's father and his company, Antenna, which controls some 47 per cent of ATV. Tsai Eng-meng owns 49 per cent of Antenna.
The lawyer said the father and son had been using the confidential information for their own interests in litigation against other shareholders over control of the station.
Mr Justice Peter Cheung Chak-yau, Madam Justice Maria Yuen Ka-ning and Mr Justice Joseph Fok dismissed the appeal by the free-to-air station's chief. They will hand down their judgment at a later date.
Yesterday's ruling against Shing follows the revelation that a Communications Authority draft report called him unfit to hold a broadcast licence and proposed fining the station a record HK$1 million because he ceded many of his day-to-day responsibilities to major investor Wong Ching.
Details of the report were revealed for the first time two days ago in court filings when ATV lodged a judicial challenge to block the authority from releasing its final report.
Yesterday's appeal hearing follows a Court of First Instance ruling in September of last year that Kevin Tsai could have unlimited access to the documents, since it was company policy that such information could be passed to shareholders. But two weeks later, the court imposed a condition that Kevin Tsai may use the finance and operations documents only to discharge his duties as a board member. This followed ATV's application for a delay of a Court of First Instance order on September 16, pending an appeal.
Barrister Charles Manzoni, for Tsai, told the appeal court yesterday that Tsai only learned about a damning draft report and ATV's application for a judicial review on Thursday, despite being a director.
Manzoni had earlier called the appeal application a tactical ploy by Wong Ching, a relative of Shing.
'What Wong is trying to do is to keep his sole control of ATV for as long as he can,' Manzoni said earlier. 'Mr Wong is trying to wrest control [of the station] from Mr Tsai.'
