Singapore: Shares in one of leading marine engineer SembCorp Marine, plunged 15% on Tuesday to S$4.76 ($3.26) following news that it may have lost $248m in unauthorized foreign-exchange transactions, reports Forbes. The company, which has fired its financial director Wee Sing Guan, informed the Singapore Stock Exchange of unrealized loss in the neighborhood of $165 million--excluding a $83 million payment made by the its subsidiary Jurong Shipyard (pictured), to an undisclosed creditor bank before the irregularities were discovered.
"I can't disclose which banks are involved because there's an investigation," Judy Han, a SembCorp Marine spokeswoman told Bloomberg. "We will look into the whole system to prevent a recurrence of such things."
SembCorp Marine said it does not expect the loss will "have any impact on [Jurong Shipyard] operations" and that "it is business as usual." It could be a different story, however, for the parent company; the extent of the impact on its results for the fiscal year 2007 will "depend on the movements of the exchange rates, outcome of the investigations and disputes, if any."
SembCorp managed to offset part of the loss by selling its holding in China Cosco's Singapore-listed shares for $157.5m [25/10/07]
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