Singapore firm ups stake by further 40 per cent in e-Channelling
View(s):The Singapore based venture that made a mandatory offer to purchase shares in the doctor-channelling company e-Channelling has increased its existing stake by a further 40 per cent.
In the wake of the mandatory offer by Singapore based Senior Marketing Systems Asia to take over the e-Channelling company, the company made an announcement to the Colombo Stock Exchange on Wednesday stating that its period had expired.
SMS Asia had received offers amounting to 39.84 per cent of the ordinary shares of e-Channelling PLC. SMS Asia held a stake of 47.5 per cent or 58 million shares in e-Channelling prior to announcing the mandatory offer. These acquisitions were made between June 11 and July 14 during the period of the offer.
The Singapore based company increased the stake in e-Channelling by 17.5 per cent when it purchased 21, 429, 204 ordinary shares. In this respect, they have increased their share portfolio to 57, 946, 497 ordinary shares and holding 47.4 per cent of the voting ordinary shares in issue. Shares amounting to 16, 060, 003 were sold on Monday by British American Technologies at Rs.14 per share to Senior Marketing Systems Asia.
Previously, SMS Asia held 29.9 per cent of the total issued and paid shares amounting to 36, 517, 293 shares.
Currently the second largest shareholder is Trading Partners Pvt. Ltd which holds a 28 per cent stake in the company. The market would be watching the moves by this company to ascertain if they too would sell out or not, brokers said.
The mandatory offer has been made at the highest price paid within the 12 months of Rs.14 at which SMS Asia bought the last amount of shares as well.
The remaining number of ordinary shares is 64, 184, 918 amounting to 52.55 per cent of the total issued and paid up ordinary share capital of e-Channelling.
SMS Asia was established in 2012 as a subsidiary company of SMS Co. Ltd for the purpose of investing in companies and management of overseas business of the parent company, which is a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
SMS Asia has invested in many companies in Asia namely Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Australia for the purpose of business development in healthcare and IT sectors.