Sime Darby's new 316m shares to be placed out at 5% discount

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday, Sime Darby said SDE had on Feb 5 received a notice from the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC) that EMAS had submitted a request for arbitration against SDE which was filed on Jan 24, 2016. The amount that EMAS is seeking from the arbitration proceedings is AED41.04mil (about RM46.37mil).

KUALA LUMPUR: Sime Darby Bhd's new 316.35 million new shares to be placed out would be at no more than 5% below the volume weighted average price (VWAP) for the preceding five market days.

The plantations-property giant said on Tuesday the issue price of the placement shares would be determined via book-building and fixed by the board. 

At midday, Sime Darby's share price was up two sen to RM7.84.

On Aug 23, Sime Darby announced plans to raise up to RM2.37bil from the share placement at about RM7.51 sen in a move to reduce its borrowings and for capital expenditure and working capital.

It had then said, based on a 5% discount to the five-day VWAP up to and including the last practical date of RM7.90, the indicative issue price for the placement would be RM7.51 per placement share.

It plans to use RM1.20bil of the proceeds to pare down the borrowings. Its total borrowings as at June 30 was RM15.83bil. Based on the average interest rate of borrowings of approximately 3.4% per annum, such repayment would enable it to save about RM40.8mil per annum in interest savings.

Sime Darby added the other RM950mil would be used for capital expenditure for the group’s plantation, motors and property businesses.