Chan Kit Whye on EZRA's fall from grace

Ezra traded at 83.7 cents in Dec 2013, and ended at 1.1 cents recently. Chart: BloombergThe rise and fall of EZRA: The company piled up debt through acquisitions, rightly or wrongly, believing that the future for the business and oil price would continue to grow unabated.

What really went wrong when a Board of Directors and Independent Directors oversee the management, regularly review the financials, risks and internal controls.

Are the current guidelines on corporate governance not good enough to signal a potential corporate failure?

Or was too much authority given to the top leadership, its CEO, to make decisions without carefully evaluating the consequences and risks?

Corporate failures have repeatedly happened in history, but the ones who suffer the loss are the ignorant minority shareholders, holding shares with the hope that they would one day recover.

Just hope that no one has lose all their life savings by putting all into just one company like Ezra.

Prior to his retirement, Chan Kit Whye (left) worked more than 30 years as Regional Finance Director, Financial Controller and Manager in a multinational specialty chemical business. He has played an active role in CPA (Australia) Singapore Branch, taking up positions in its Continuing Professional Development and Social Committees.   Kit Whye is a Fellow of CPA Australia, CA of Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants and CA of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants. He holds a BBus(Transport) Degree from RMIT, MAcc Degree from Charles Sturt University and MBA from Durham Business School.