Much has been said about how Citic Pacific management allegedly misled investors by maintaining there was no material change in its financial position a week after discovering a mammoth loss related to currency speculation.
Much seems to have been done. Regulators issued high-profile press releases, announcing investigations. Financial officials pledged zero tolerance of misleading statements.
But Citic Pacific is not alone in being under the corporate governance spotlight.
Of the four listed companies that suddenly went into liquidation in the past three months, there were dramatic contradictions between what the management said and what they knew before the firms went bust (see table).
Compared with Citic Pacific, they are much smaller; their influence is much less and the publicity they have attracted is minor. But the policy of keeping shareholders in the dark - a reflection on the corporate culture in Hong Kong - is equally, if not more, worrying.
There are two types of cases. Group A are the managements who acted normally when the privileged ones already got wind of their troubles and dumped their shares.
Clothing chain store U-Right International Holdings told the market it was not aware of any reason for the dive in its share price a day after bankers wrote them a demand for immediate repayment. It was the same with Peace Mark (Holdings), only that the luxury watch retailer pleaded its ignorance for many more days.