MAS active on last trading day

KUALA LUMPUR: Shares of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) were actively traded on its last trading day on Friday, pending a privatisation exercise by Khazanah Nasional Bhd.

At 11.24am, MAS was down half a sen to 26.5 sen with some 47.66 million shares done.

The FBM KLCI was down 4.4 points to 1,740.17. Turnover was 567.13 million shares valued at RM475.93mil. There were 136 gainers, 475 decliners and 258 counters unchanged.

MAS will be suspended from trading from Dec 15 to facilitate its selective capital reduction and repayment (SCR) exercise until its delisting.

The carrier has also set an ex-date for its SCR and repayment exercise to Dec 17.

Under the SCR, MAS said the shareholders, other than Khazanah, whose names appeared on its record of depositors as of 5pm on Dec 19, would be entitled to receive 27 sen cash for every MAS share held.

The capital repayment is expected to be made within 10 days from Dec 19.

Last month, minority shareholders approved Khazanah’s proposal to take MAS private by paying 27 sen a share, totalling RM1.4bil, to buy out shares it did not own as part of its plan to resuscitate the ailing airline. 

Khazanah’s intention was to take the company private and transfer the entire operations and assets into a new company.