Cash bid made for delisting of Rotary Engineering, Latest Business News - The New Paper
Business

Cash bid made for delisting of Rotary Engineering

This article is more than 12 months old

Rotary Engineering's controlling shareholder, the Chia family group, and an investment arm of the Oman government have made a cash bid to take the mainboard-listed company private.

The takeover vehicle Orochem is offering 46 cents per share.

Orochem is 64.7 per cent owned by members of the Chia family and 35.3 per cent held by Oman Investment Fund. It currently holds 60.63 per cent of Rotary shares.

It has given irrevocable undertakings to accept the offer, the firm announced in a pre-market filing yesterday.

With such a large chunk of the shares to be tendered in favour of the offer, the chances of the privatisation going through are higher.

The offer price represents a premium of about 21 per cent over the stock's last full-day traded price of 38 cents and a premium of 25 per cent over the volume-weighted average price of 36.8 cents for the three months leading up to the stock's trading halt on Sept 29.

Rotary said Orochem does not intend to revise the offer price. The shares jumped 8.5 per cent to 44.5 cents yesterday before closing 9.8 per cent or four cents higher at 45 cents.

The Chia family group includes Rotary chairman Roger Chia Kim Piow, his brother and executive director Chia Kim Chua, and his spouse and non-executive director Jenny Wong. The Chia family group, together with investment vehicle REL Investments, owns about 39.25 per cent of Rotary shares.

Oman Investment Fund, which is part of the investment arm of the Omani Ministry of Finance, holds another 21.38 per cent of Rotary shares.

Rotary said the offer will close at least 14 days after the offer documents have been dispatched.

TRADINGstock marketFinance