Nasdaq to delist Wins for not meeting shareholder rules

NEW YORK: Wins Finance Holdings Inc, the Chinese loan guarantor that couldn’t explain a 4,555 per cent surge in its stock, is set to be delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Market, which cited violations of exchange rules related to its shareholder base.

Nasdaq said Wins didn’t meet regulations requiring it to have at least 300 shareholders who own 100 shares.

The exchange’s decision was also based on “the making of alleged misrepresentations by the company relating to the 300 round-lot shareholder requirement”, as well as public interest concerns, said Wins.

Wins plans to request a hearing to appeal the decision.

At one point, the stock had soared as much as 4,555 per cent from its debut on Nasdaq in 2015.

Its market value surpassed US$9 billion (RM38.61 billion) in February, about four times as much as LendingClub Corp, an online lender that had 50 times the revenue as of March.

Wins, which guarantees loans for small businesses in China and leases equipment to them, lost nearly all of its market value after a report in March on the mysterious gain in its shares. The stock then spiked in June, and the company again said it didn’t know why.

It is unclear what Wins’s Nasdaq removal will mean for the company’s sale to Freeman FinTech Corp, a Hong Kong-based firm that agreed in December to buy the founder’s majority stake for a large discount. Bloomberg