Stock in an Asian casino operator crashed after the chairman of the company disappeared. Landing International Development is the owner of one of the largest casinos in South Korea. Shares of Landing have plummeted by close to 50% since Thursday in Hong Kong after the company announced that it could not contact or find its chairman Yang Zhihui.
Landing in a filing with the stock exchange in Hong Kong on Friday said that it does not expect the temporary disappearance of Yang to have an adverse impact on the daily business operations or the financial positions.
The hotel and casino owner is not the first company that is Hong Kong listed to report one of its top executives suddenly disappeared.
Several top executives at Chinese businesses have suddenly vanished from China and Hong Kong over the past few years.
Through most of August, the stock price of Landing has drop sharply after its announced plans of opening another casino in the Philippines were attacked by the Manila government.
The President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte was critical of a lease agreement entered into by Landing and a local partner in the Philippines, the Nayong Pilipino Foundation, with a presidential spokesperson saying it was highly disadvantageous to the Philippine government.
The president decided as well to fire the entire management and board of Nayong Pilipino, added the spokesperson.
The statement by the president came on August 7 only hours after ground was broken by Landing on the new casino in Manila, which is scheduled to open in 2022.
In one of its filings with the stock exchange, Landing said at that at this time it remained fully committed to moving forward with its casino construction.
Landing added in its filing that to their knowledge the lease was legal, valid as well as enforceable.
