General Magnetics - a lesson yet to be learned?

jakarta traffic from my taxi window

General Magnetics (GM) conducted its first AGM as an unlisted firm last week. Joyce Hooi of Business Times observed that for an unlisted firm's AGM, it was really well attended but with so much outpouring of outrage by its shareholders.

GM was listed 20 years ago as a cassette tape maker, "survived the death of the Walkman age, struggled through the Discman decade as a recordable CD and DVD maker and finally succumbed to the iPod era".

It made losses by the millions since the turn of century and was put on the watchlist in 2008 before being delisted in April this year.

Why are there so much outpouring of outrage by shareholders at this stage? Some shareholders have held on to their shares years after years for the last 10 years despite the annual warning bells of losses being announced. Why lament the delisting?

In fact, they were not outraged by the delisting but rather by the fact the minority shareholders could not force the majority/management to liquidate all remaining assets and distribute the net proceeds to all shareholders. Why would a shareholder buys shares in company and hope the company goes into liquidation?

Towards the end of listed status, the shares had traded so far below net tangible asset value. For those who may have bought at those prices, they are clamouring for the company to be liquidated.

Learning point - Are you holding on to shares of companies, that in recent years, have been making significant losses year after year (eg. Creative)? If so, are you doing anything about it?