NagaCorp again delays share award due to Covid impact

Dec 27, 2021 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck  

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Casino operator NagaCorp Ltd is to delay until either the financial year ending 2022 or 2023, a stock award plan it had announced in January. The decision was “due to the prolonged global market disruption brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the Hong Kong-listed company in a Friday filing.

The scheme was to have been in place by June 30. But on June 25, the company said it would delay the share award to December 2021, citing the “temporary suspension of business” of its NagaWorld casino complex in Cambodia.

NagaCorp has a long-life monopoly casino licence for the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, via its NagaWorld resort complex.

From early March until reopening on September 15, the NagaWorld complex had been shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In Friday’s filing, NagaCorp said it would “further defer the grants” on the share scheme, to the “financial year ending 2022 or 2023, with the exact timing of such grants to be determined by the board after taking into consideration the performance of the group at the relevant time.”

In January, NagaCorp stated its board had adopted a share award scheme, valid for 10 years, and that it was proposing an initial grant of nearly 19.23 million shares in aggregate, including to the firm’s directors.

It said at the time that nearly 10.23 million shares would go to NagaCorp’s directors and 9.0 million shares to the group’s employees.

The initial grant was to include: 6.0 million shares to Tim McNally, chairman of NagaCorp; nearly 1.17 million shares to Chen Lip Keong, the group’s founder and chief executive; and 3.0 million shares to Philip Lee Wai Tuck, the firm’s executive deputy chairman and director.

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