Bangkok--21 Aug--SEC
The SEC revealed that the Settlement Committee has imposed a fine of 500,000 baht on Sunthorn Chaononghin, then an engineer of Solartron PLC (SOLAR), for trading SOLAR shares by using non-public information about SOLAR and Wuxi Suntech Power Co., Ltd. (SUNTECH) jointly won the bid for solar power plant project of Bangchak Petroleum PLC (BCP) in which SOLAR will be entitled to revenue sharing around 1,120 million baht.
With the referral from the Stock Exchange of Thailand, the SEC probed into the case and found that Sunthorn had attended the negotiations between SOLAR and BCP several times and learned of the final negotiation result that SOLAR and SUNTECH were likely to win the bid for BCP’s 3,200 million baht solar power plant project where SOLAR will be entitled to revenue sharing at 35 percent of the project value or approximately 1,120 million baht. This information was thus material to positive change in the SOLAR share price. The SEC considered that Sunthorn relied on this information to buy SOLAR shares through his own securities trading account at the opening of morning trade session on February 22, 2010 before such information became public in the evening.
His action was deemed using inside information to take advantage of the others in contravention of Section 241 of the Securities and Exchange Act B.E. 2535 (1992) (SEA) and thus liable to the penalty under Section 296 of the said Act. As he agreed to enter the settlement procedure, the Settlement Committee ordered him to pay a fine of 500,000 baht.