Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Holdings has completed two share buyback transactions following an eventful two weeks in which its share price has tanked.

On Thursday, the Chinese shipyard confirmed that its executive chairman, Ren Yuanlin, has stepped away from the business to assist with a Communist Party of China investigation.

Since 8 August, the Chinese shipyard has seen a a trading halt, a stock exchange query and a new chief executive.

Its share price has fallen 30% since August began and was trading at SGD 0.99 per share as on Friday.

Share purchase

Yangzijiang has spent a total of SGD 3.5m ($2.5m) on repurchasing 4 million of its shares across two separate transactions on Thursday and Friday.

The transactions were signed off by Ren Yuanlin's son Ren Letian, who has stepped in as chief executive of the shipyard while his father assists with the investigation in China.

A tranche of 2m shares was purchased on Thursday at a price of up to SGD 0.87 per share or SGD 1.7m in total.

This was followed on Friday by the repurchase of 2m more shares at the slightly higher price of SGD 0.09 per share or SGD 1.8m in total.

Yangzijiang's stock crashed by 28% in two hours on 8 August, leading to a trading halt and a query from the Singapore Stock Exchange.

The share price plummeted over 15% when trading resumed on Thursday after a one-week halt.

One stock broker this week told TradeWinds that Ren Yuanlin's temporary departure "has not been well received by fund managers”.

“When news of this type takes place, they [fund managers] need to dump some shares," the broker said.

Investigation

As TradeWinds reported on 2 August, a retired local Communist Party of China official, Liu Jianguo, 65, is under investigation by an internal party body and “suspected of serious violations of the law”, according to an announcement by Beijing’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspec­tion (CCDI), a Communist Party of China agency that investigates infringements by party members.

Ren Yuanlin was granted a leave of absence on 9 August by Yangzijiang's board.

"The intention of the leave of absence is to expedite the completion of the investigation so that he may resume his full-time duties with the group as soon as possible," the shipyard said in an exchange filing on Wednesday.

Yangzijiang added that neither its chairman nor any of its directors or executives or any company within its group are the subject of the investigation.

The shipyard group is operating as normal and the company remains in compliance with the Singapore Stock Exchange's listing rules, the filing said.