KUALA LUMPUR: A consortium including the founding family of Yinson Holdings Bhd
is considering sweetening its bid to take the Kuala Lumpur-listed energy infrastructure company private, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Lim family, Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and shipping firm MISC Bhd may submit an offer of about RM2.50 per share, up from RM2.35 previously, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.
That would be a premium of 4% to yesterday’s share price and value the company at about RM7.3bil.
The group could announce the higher bid as soon as this week, the people said, adding that a deal would be subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.
Deliberations are still ongoing and might not result in a higher offer, they said.
Representatives for the Lim family and Yinson declined to comment, while the EPF and MISC didn’t respond to requests seeking comment.
The consortium had announced in August that it was considering an indicative offer of RM2.35 per share for an estimated US$1.7bil buyout of Yinson, which operates floating production, storage and offloading vessels, as well as renewable energy and electric vehicle assets.
Yinson’s shares have risen about 5% since then, trading at RM2.27 yesterday and giving the company a market capitalisation of around US$1.6bil.
The Lim family founded Yinson as a logistics business in the 1980s and owned 27.7% of it as of the end of July, while EPF held 17.1%, Yinson’s website showed. —Bloomberg
