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An exterior view of Mr. Pizza restaurant (Yonhap) |
Shares of MP Group, the South Korean company that controls pizza restaurant franchise Mr. Pizza and coffee chain Manoffin, have been suspended from trading, nearly two months after resuming transactions on the nation’s secondary bourse.
The Korea Exchange’s Kosdaq Market Committee decided Wednesday to halt trading of MP Group shares as the firm has been suffering operating losses for six consecutive years. The decision came to “protect investors from a possible delisting,” according to the committee officials.
The KRX will further review MP Group’s qualification as a listed company and decide whether to lift the trading suspension or to delist it from the Kosdaq market, the officials added.
MP Group has been in the red since 2015, putting the company at risk of being delisted by market authorities twice. According to stock market regulations, a Kosdaq-listed company in the red for more than five years in a row is subject for a delisting review.
The KRX previously suspended the firm’s stock trading for over three years as its founder and former Chairman Jung Woo-hyun was accused in 2017 of a breach of trust and embezzling some 15 billion won ($13.54 million).
But since Jung and his family pledged to leave management and passed the control of the group to a local private equity fund jointly run by Korean investment houses Ulmus Investment and TR Investment, the stock operator resumed transactions of the company in December last year.
Prior to the latest trading suspension, MP Group closed at 895 won apiece, plunging 46.41 percent from the day of its return to the stock market two months ago. Its subsidiary MP Hankang plummeted 8.81 percent to 921 won apiece at Wednesday’s closing bell.
By Jie Ye-eun (
yeeun@heraldcorp.com)
