DIRECTORS beware. Gangs of vigilante fund managers could even now be stalking your company. Don't bother calling for the Securities and Futures Commission. These are deputies.
'Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinking badges,' they will say as they sack the board.
Blame Anthony 'Wyatt Earp' Neoh, SFC supremo, who this week called for fund managers to be sworn in as a posse and sent out to defend investors.
Certainly, fund managers in these parts don't lack firepower. Look at the aggro that Regent Fund Managers is making for numerous closed-ended investment funds with big discounts to NAV. But 'Big Jim' Mellon won't pick the marshall's badge up from the bar.
If the China Asset Fund were successfully liquidated, other shareholders might make a profit but only by accident. Big Jim is just as likely to sell his shares to China Venturetech or fund managers and ride into the sunset. While it is true powerful institutional shareholdings can sometimes exercise great power in New York or London, that is not nearly so true in Hong Kong where managements always find reasons to accept what the major shareholders say.
James Filmer-Wilson of Chelsea Securities is perhaps closer to the Neoh idea of institutional shareholder responsibility. He has taken the grievances of investors he advises to the press but only when the stock exchange has not had the ability or desire to act.