At the company annual general meeting last Friday, a large bloc of shareholders voted against every resolution put forwards by the company, including the re-election of directors such as Jerry Yiu Chun Kong, who is also a director of both BCFC and BSH.
Suen’s resignation means he now holds zero directorial roles in listed companies in Hong Kong.
While EPI were able to pass all resolutions at the meeting, the 31% vote against each one underlined shareholder unhappiness in the company.
As disclosures made to the stock exchange show no single shareholder owns 31% of stock in EPI, it can only be assumed that a group of shareholders have voted in concert to show their disapproval.
From speaking to stock market analysts in Hong Kong, this level of shareholder dissatisfaction is rare at AGMs and points to potential underlying issues within the company.
Latest accounts for EPI Holdings show that the company made a loss of HK$138M (about £14.4M) for the year ending December 31, 2019.
EPI’s accounts will be hit further as plummeting oil prices ensure that their oil interests in Argentina are now much less profitable than they were before the coronavirus outbreak.
Share prices have plummeted to a low of HK$0.04 per share, from a value of HK$0.17 last August.
Why does this matter to Blues?
As I pointed out in my post on Monday, right now Blues have cash flow issues of their own.
This means that the club are more reliant on infusions of cash from Hong Kong to ensure day to day operations can continue, at least until if and when transfer of players such as Jude Bellingham can be realised.
While there is no evidence that the flow of money from the Far East is slowing down or stopping, this news from Hong Kong shows that Suen is continuing to suffer problems with his investments.
In turn it confirms just why Suen has not put any further money into BSH since the loan extension granted by TTA in December 2018.
Once seen as the “penny stock king” in Hong Kong and celebrated in the news for buying an expensive mansion on Repulse Bay Road, Suen has been much lower profile in the last 18 months.
Part of that is down to Suen being named in proceedings by the Market Misconduct Tribunal related to the non-disclosure of inside information at one of his former companies.
That hearing is currently scheduled for October of this year.