Court clears way for Oriental Peninsula IPO

The Makati Regional Trial Court issued yesterday a 72-hour temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the Platinum Group Metals Corp. from stopping or derailing the initial public offering (IPO) and listing of mining holding firm Oriental Peninsula Resources Group.

The TRO was in response to Oriental Peninsula’s petition seeking to stop PGMC from further spreading adverse reports against the soon-to-be-listed mining firm.

In an order penned by Makati RTC executive judge Winlove Dumayas, PGMC was directed to “refrain and desist from causing the spread or circulation of malicious news items tending to prevent, obstruct, derail, impede and or frustrate the IPO of the shares of stock of Oriental Peninsula as well as from actually opposing the conduct of the said IPO or listing of the shares of stock on December 19.”

As this developed, the Securities and Exchange Commission reiterated that Oriental Peninsula has fully complied with the disclosure  rules and all other requirements imposed on companies intending to go public.

The SEC issued the statement in response to allegations that the Commission may have violated its mandate to protect the investing public by approving the registration statement of Oriental Peninsula amid allegations that the mining holding firm failed to disclose a pending dispute between one of its subsidiaries, Citinickel Mines and Development Corp., and PGMC over a mineral property located in Palawan.

“The Corporation Finance Department has reviewed the allegations contained in the letter complaint filed by PGMC and it appears that these issues have been  properly disclosed to in Oriental Peninsula’s registration statement.  That’s why it took us a couple of days to issue a permit to sell securities to Oriental Peninsula because we wanted to make sure that all the issues raised by PGMC has been addressed,” said SEC commission secretary Gerard Lukban.

The CFD oversees the compliance of listed corporations with the disclosure rules and processes applications for IPOs and additional share issuances.

“It’s but natural that certain companies will be embroiled in legal tussles but this doesn’t mean they have already done something wrong.  In this case, no wrongdoing has been established yet as the cases are pending,” Lukban explained.