[SINGAPORE] The trustee-manager of Dasin Retail Trust (DRT) rebutted criticism from its former alternate director, who claimed in a resignation letter that his input was snubbed and key financial reports were not published despite his reminders, among other complaints.
In a bourse filing on Tuesday (May 20), the trustee-manager set out to address the assertions Zhang Zhongming raised in an Apr 15 e-mail that saw him resigning from his position as alternate director for Zhang Zhencheng – noting that it “disagrees with his allegations”.
Zhang Zhongming is the nephew of Zhang Zhencheng, who is a non-executive director and shareholder of the trustee-manager.
Zhang Zhongming noted in his exit letter that he was resigning effective immediately, believing that staying in his position “serves no useful purpose”.
In response to the resignee’s claim that his “requests, suggestions and feedback have been consistently ignored since early 2023 by the majority directors”, the trustee-manager maintained there were “valid reasons and grounds”.
It raised examples of the resignee’s “repeated insistence that the invalid extraordinary general meeting of DRT… was valid, contrary to the legal advice received”.
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Regarding Zhang Zhongming’s second claim that the lack of board meetings prevented him from expressing his views, the trustee-manager said that “it has always been open” for him to convene a board meeting but he “elected not to exercise his power”. It added that he was “not interested to participate in open discussions”.
Zhang Zhongming’s third point touched on what he described as the trustee-manager’s failure to convene annual general meetings in 2022 and 2023, and publish DRT’s third-quarter and second-half financial reports for 2023, despite his repeated reminders.
In response, the trustee-manager said its chief financial officer “has used his best efforts to produce the relevant interim financial statements and had sent information requests to the relevant Chinese personnel (but) they did not cooperate”.
Without audited financial statements, the meetings cannot be held, said the trustee-manager.
On his fourth claim that the board “continues to carry on business without assessing if there is a risk of wrongful trading” despite his continuous warnings, the trustee-manager said it was “patently untrue”.
Replying to another of Zhang Zhongming’s points that the chief executive officer “failed to report any work” to them, the trustee-manager argued that such an expectation was “unreasonable” as there were conflicts of interest.
Units of DRT closed Tuesday down S$0.002 or 10 per cent at S$0.018, before the announcement.
