KUALA LUMPUR (July 7): Xinghe Holdings Bhd’s managing director Ma Guo Liang resigned today, as executive chairman Stephen Ng Min Lin appears to be tightening his grip on the company.

Ma resigned to focus on his other personal development, the company said in an exchange filing.

Other filings showed Ng had further upped his stake in the company.

Since mid-February, Ng raised his stake in Xinghe by 3.99% to 7.62%, from 3.63% previously. He did this by accumulating 25.02 million Xinghe shares in the open market.

It was reported in April that the company was undergoing a transformation to become an aquaculture-based food producer.

Xinghe is also planning to change its name to MAG Holdings Bhd, with the letters MAG said to represent Malaysian Aquaculture Group, to better represent its business nature.

Xinghe said the farm assets are located in Tawau, Sabah, and could breed 2,000 tonnes of vannamei (whiteleg shrimp or king prawn) every year and are mainly exported in unpeeled and frozen packs to distributors in South Korea, Vietnam and China.

Xinghe shares closed unchanged at 25.5 sen today, bringing a market capitalisation of RM157 million. Year-to-date, the counter is up 6.2%, from 24 sen on Dec 31, 2019.