A finance director threw an analyst out of a company results presentation in Hong Kong because he disagreed with the analyst’s negative views, in a rare example of a company lashing out personally and publicly against its critics.

Chris Lee, chief financial officer of Pax Global, a maker of electronic payment terminals for retailers, asked Timothy Lam, an equity analyst at Macquarie, to leave before the meeting started.

Mr Lam, who eventually complied, is one of only two analysts of the 19 tracked by Bloomberg to have a negative rating on the company. The other, Leping Huang of Nomura, downgraded his view from “neutral” to “reduce” only after the incident — which observers say also highlights broader transparency issues. “While we do not judge this dispute, we think this may hurt Pax Global’s shareholder value,” Mr Huang told clients yesterday.