Yi-Lai directors up stake, launch takeover

New high for Dagang NeXchange Bhd

KUALA LUMPUR: Two directors of Yi-Lai Bhd increased their stakes  in the tile maker to slightly over the 33% threshold, triggering a conditional mandatory takeover offer.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia on Thursday, Yi-Lai said it received a takeover offer from Boundless Vigour Sdn Bhd for 78.5 sen per share.

Boundless Vigour is a unit of Hampton Capital Pte Ltd, which in turn is a unit of Capital Global Ventures Ltd. 

Aaron Tan Jian Hong and Wendy Kang Hui Lin own 50% each in Capital Global.

Tan is an executive director of Yi-Lai, appointed to the board on June 5, 2014. Kang is a non-independent non-exeuctive director of Yi-Lai.

Boundless Vigour acquired 550,000 shares in Yi-Lai between Sept 8 and Oct 4 from the open market at prices ranging from 75 sen to 78.5 sen for RM420,000. It later bought 40,300 shares, or 0.03% interest, and raised its stake to 0.39%.

As at Oct 5, Hampton Capital held 49.66 million shares, about 32.63% in Yi-Lai. The collective shareholdings of the offerors and PACs increased to about 33.01% from 32.99%.

Yi-Lai said the offerors did not intend to maintain the listing status of Yi-Lai and would not be taking any steps to address any shortfall in meeting the public spread requirement after the close of the offer. 

However, the listing status of Yi-Lai will be maintained if the offeror receives valid acceptances resulting in the offeror having less than 75% of total number of issued shares.