The city’s oldest Chinese-language newspaper, Sing Pao Daily News, will have no printed edition today after it failed to pay the printing fee yesterday amid financial turmoil at its parent company.
The paper will not produce a printed edition until it was offered the High Court’s approval of a financing plan that would free up funds within its parent company, Sing Pao Media Enterprises.
Both the daily’s editorial department and Gu Zhuoheng, chairman of Sing Pao Media, said Sing Pao’s bank account for operations was frozen by provisional liquidators appointed by the High Court on Monday in a proceeding which might lead to the wind-up of Sing Pao Media.
But one of the two provisional liquidators, Tiffany Wong Wing-sze, of KPMG, said it was “a misunderstanding over the information flow” and they had made no request to the bank to freeze the account.
The cease of printing came a day after Sing Pao Media said the company and its operating subsidiaries, including Sing Pao, would remain in operation regardless of the court’s appointment of the provisional liquidators on Monday.
On April 14, creditor Korchina Culture Investment filed a petition to the High Court to wind up the company. The court document was not available to the public.
Sing Pao Media published a notice in April claiming a lender had sent a statutory demand notice and that the directors were negotiating with an unnamed independent third.
Gu said he had reached an agreement with the provisional liquidators that he would inject HK$5 million to resume the daily’s operation at the moment and would invest HK$100 million annually in the future.
Wong said Gu was expected to submit the plan today and it would be handed to the court within 48 hours.
In a statement released earlier afternoon, the daily’s editorial department said it had expressed “strong disapproval” to KPMG about the frozen account.
It said: “We deeply regret that this absurd situation occurred despite that the daily had been operating healthily under an investor and the staff was dedicated to their work”
The Labour Department said it had not yet received a request for assistance from any of Sing Pao’s workers. They were invited to approach the department for enquiries or assistance.
The paper’s content will run on its website while its printing is halted.
Meanwhile, Next Media Trade Union, which represents the workers at Apple Daily’s parent company Next Media, said yesterday that staff members of the group’s other flagship publication Next Magazine would be offered voluntary severance packages. The group noted grim prospects for its print operation.
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