Sound Global Bonds Plunge After Auditors Found Cash Shortfall

by Lianting Tu
11:22 AM HKT, April 30, 2015

Sound Global Ltd., a Beijing-based water treatment company, is slumping in the bond market after saying auditors had identified a cash shortfall of about 2 billion yuan ($323 million).

Its $150 million of 11.875 percent 2017 notes plunged 17.3 cents on the dollar to 68.3 cents as of 9:24 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to prices compiled by Bloomberg. The notes have slid from this year’s high of 107.8 cents in February. Auditors found the discrepancy between Sound Global’s bank and book cash balances as of Dec. 31 while working on its 2014 earnings, according to a company statement Wednesday.

Global investors are scrutinizing Chinese companies, the world’s biggest corporate debtors, amid the slowest economic growth since 1990 and President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption. Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. became the first Chinese developer to default on dollar bonds earlier this month. Sound Global was accused of accounting irregularities by Emerson Analytics Co., an independent research group, in February.

“We have been very negative on the company after the alleged accounting irregularities, compounded by the resignation of the chairman of the audit committee post the audit issue,” wrote Trung Nguyen, a credit analyst at Lucror Analytics, a Singapore-based independent credit researcher.

Sound Global said on March 31 that independent non-executive director Wong See Meng, who was also the chairman of the audit committee, had resigned on March 26.

The auditors reported their findings to Singapore’s Ministry of Finance, Sound Global said in the statement Wednesday.

The Hong Kong-listed company’s independent review committee will hire a professional corporate-investigation firm early next week to look into the matter, probably returning a final report by late May, it said.

Assuming the auditors will resume work after the final report is issued, Sound Global expects to publish 2014 earnings in late June, according to the filing. The company’s shares, which were suspended in March, will remain so until further notice, it said.