May 21, 104:56pm
Questioning the legality of business tycoon G Gnanalingam's controversial offer of 80sen for each Maika Holdings share, the DAP today also demanded to know why the parties were hurrying to complete the deal by June 21.Speaking in Ipoh, party national labour bureau chief A Sivanesan (left) described the offer as a raw deal for the 66,000 shareholders if compared with the investment of RM1 per share they had put in 28 years ago when the company was formed in 1982.All the shareholders, he said, had to fork out 20 percent of the amount of shares they bought in cash, with the remaining 80 percent paid with bank loans taken from the then United Asian Bank (now known as CIMB).
The United Asian Bank slapped legal action against many of the shareholders who could not service their bank loans, Sivanesan said. The shareholders also suffered financially because many of them pawned the family's jewellery to raise the 20 percent cash to buy the Maika shares.Maika shareholders received dividends only for the first four years of its operation, said the lawyer who is also Sungkai assemblyperson.He also claimed that Maika made a lot of bad investments in properties in the 1990s, resulting in great losses for the MIC investment arm.The DAP leader said he also has a personal interest in the proposed sale as his wife holds 2,000 Maika shares. These are the "grey areas of the proposed sale" for which Sivanesan said shareholders would like answers:> Maju Jaya Cooperative Society Bhd led by former MIC deputy president S Subramaniam had obtained a court injunction to stop the sale of Maika's cash cow, Oriental Capital Assurance Bhd. So, even if MIC circumnavigates this legal block by selling outright the parent Maika Holdings, the legal complications over Oriental Capital Assurance will remain.> An AGM must be held in order to get the full consent of Maika shareholders to sell off the now debt-ridden investment arm of MIC.> Permission must be obtained from the Registrar of Companies before the sale of Maika Holdings is carried out.Explanation wanted
Sivanesan wants an explanation from two MIC leaders who had claimed that there were better offers than Gnanalingam's (right) offer of RM106 million, and why the better offers were not taken for the benefit of the shareholders.He said Subramaniam had stated in Kuala Lumpur about three weeks ago that he had brought in a purchaser who offered RM149 million for the Maika shares.Maika Holdings was given 48 hours to respond but its chief executive officer Vell Paari turned down the offer, saying he had a counter-proposal for a better deal.The DAP leader wants the federal government to intervene in Maika's affairs, just as it helped the shareholders of MCA investment arm Multipurpose Cooperative Society in 1986, when it was financially crippled, to get full value for their investments.Female shareholders assaultedSivanesan claimed that Maika Holdings had about 40,000 shareholders now, out of the original 66,000.He said a handful of shareholders controlled the majority shares and they allegedly bulldozed their proposals whenever a meeting of the debt-ridden investment company was called.He said Maika had not conducted its AGMs for the past four years.He also alleged that female members, including his wife, were assaulted by MIC men when they asked questions about the financial aspects of Maika at its meeting on May 13, 1992.Similarly, he said, Perak DAP deputy chief M Kulasegaran (left), who has 20,000 Maika shares, was also manhandled at the AGM five years ago.Both the DAP leaders had lodged separate police reports against the attackers at the time of the incidents, but nothing has materialised to date, Sivanesan added.
Source from : http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/132405
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