Late yesterday afternoon, while I was at the bank trying to get some new notes for ang pow, I received a number of calls from investors who had purchased Jaya shares on my recommendation. The shares fell sharply yesterday by more than 5% on some volume. The rumor from a report from a broking house was that Jaya had defaulted on a loan. I told them this was not possible as Jaya had a strong balance sheet and had already restructured its short term loans to long term. Total debt was about S$340mn with gross cash of S$220mn and expected annual profit of S$80-100mn.
I did however say that the shareholder of Jaya was having some financial difficulty and this was confirmed in a SGX filing that the banks had enforced security on their 54% stake in Jaya . This is not new and the shareholder ......