SEC Charges Future FinTech Group CEO Huang With Manipulative Trading
January 11 2024 - 4:42PM
Dow Jones News
By Dean Seal
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Shanchun
Huang with allegedly inflating Future FinTech Group's share price
just before he took over as the company's chief executive.
The SEC alleged in a complaint Thursday that Huang used
manipulative trading techniques in early 2020 to push the fintech
firm's share price up, with the goal of preventing it from being
delisted from the Nasdaq exchange.
According to the complaint filed in New York federal court,
Future FinTech's founder and former chief executive approached
Huang in late 2019 or early 2020 about becoming the company's next
chief executive.
Huang allegedly started using an account in Hong Kong to trade
in Future FinTech's stock in January 2020, when the shares were at
risk of being delisted because they had fallen below the $1 minimum
bid price.
The SEC claims Huang bought more than 530,000 shares over a
two-month period and traded at a volume large enough to represent a
high percentage of the stock's overall daily volume. Huang also
placed multiple buy orders in short time frames and made other
trades that "generally would not make economic sense for an
investor who sought to buy the stock at the lowest available
price," the agency alleged.
"Huang's trades were intended to, and at times did, push the
Future FinTech stock price upward," the SEC said.
The regulator also claims that after Huang was named Future
FinTech's CEO in March 2020, he failed to make required filings
about his ownership stake in the company until a year later, by
which time he no longer owned any company stock.
The SEC seeks fines and to have Huang barred from serving as an
officer or director of a public company.
A representative for Future FinTech didn't respond to a request
for comment. The company's website didn't appear to be active on
Thursday afternoon.
Write to Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 11, 2024 17:27 ET (22:27 GMT)
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