KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 21): Last Friday (Sept 18), Zetrix AI Bhd (KL:ZETRIX) made an unusual and shocking announcement. The company was unable to proceed to pay to shareholders a cash dividend which was due on that day.
Zetrix blamed it on a substantial shareholder it did not name, saying that the substantial shareholder had on Sept 14 obtained a court injunction on the cash dividend payment because of a dispute he/she/it had with the entity/person operating an unnamed nominee account in which Zetrix shares are held.
Zetrix had declared two types of dividend, cash or shares, and shareholders had to choose one. The shares portion was unaffected by the court injunction.
The question is — one shareholder has a dispute with a nominee account and all shareholders cannot get their cash dividend of 2.89 sen per share?
This is ridiculous.
We, therefore, implore regulator Bursa Malaysia to ask Zetrix to do the following:
- Reveal the identities of the shareholder, the nominee account and the beneficial owner of the account.
- Explain the exact relationship between the shareholder and the beneficial owner of the nominee account. And if any Zetrix director or top management have any ties with the shareholder and nominee account.
- Explain why it only announced the injunction on Sept 18 when the cash dividend was to be paid when the injunction was obtained on Sept 14 — a four-day gap.
- Reveal when the injunction application was filed in court and when Zetrix's board was informed of it.
- Did Zetrix try to challenge it? If not, why not? If yes, why wasn’t it disclosed at the time, given that it is material information?
A lot has happened in the past two weeks with Zetrix, with its stock price collapsing followed by forced sale of shares of its controlling shareholder Wong Thean Soon. But, there must be more to it than meets the eye.
Shareholders deserve clarity. Bursa must act.