Fab equipment maker APTC said on Wednesday that it has found that its shareholder list has been leaked by a securities firm.
APTC, also known as Adaptive Plasma, said its shareholder list, shareholder addresses, how many shares they own, their phone numbers and nationality as of March 31 2022 was leaked.
The etching equipment maker said it has notified the authorities for an investigation.
According to APTC, one shareholder had filed a lawsuit against it seeking access to its shareholder list last year. The court allowed it in July and afterward, the shareholder received the shareholder list in a file form.
This file has been shared with others until it was shared with APTC again, the company said.
During months prior, another large shareholder had attempted to sell its shares in APTC through a security firm above the market price, APTC explained.
An executive of one of many investors that showed interest in purchasing the large shareholder’s shares turned in the shareholder list to the company that it received from an employee of the securities firm. The list was the same one that was given to the one shareholder after the court ruling in July.
APTC believes that the one shareholder provided the shareholder list to the large shareholder and the large shareholder gave it to the securities firm, that it employs.
APTC also said it found chat data between the employee of the securities firm and the large shareholder that proves this.
The fab equipment maker also believes there were additional unlawful leaking of information besides the sharing of the shareholder list.
APTC declined to share who the large shareholder is. Public data from the company indicates that ex-CEO Kim Nam-hun has shares of 11.89% personally and 13.4% in total with his relatives.
TheElec has asked if the large shareholder was Kim. He didn’t provide a clear answer, only saying “Forget about it, it has nothing to do with me.”
Last year, there was a report from Seoul Economic Daily that Kim was planning to sell its shares in the only. The ex-CEO reportedly hired Samsung Securities to handle the work.
Kim had sought a court injunction against APTC to prevent the company from issuing new shares and having access to its minutes of the board. This was denied by the court in May, which stated that the minutes could have sensitive information, while Kim was working as the CEO of Nice Plasma, a rival to APTC, that can use the information for an unfair advantage.
