Accordia Golf Trust unitholders withdraw requisition notice after sponsor ups offer price

NO extraordinary general meeting (EGM) in relation to the recent requisition notice sent by Accordia Golf Trust (AGT) unitholders will be convened.

This came as AGT's trustee-manager on Saturday received separate letters from two of the requisitioning unitholders - Hibiki Path Advisors and CIM Dividend Income Fund - withdrawing the notice.

With Hibiki and CIM's withdrawal, the remaining requisitioning unitholders now hold less than 10 per cent in total of the voting rights required to convene an EGM, the trustee-manager said in a filing on Tuesday morning.

The trustee-manager announced last Friday that AGT's sponsor, Accordia Golf, is now willing to fork out 65.2 billion yen (S$848.4 million) to buy over the trust's 88 golf courses in Japan, an increase of 3.4 billion yen from the original purchase price offered in June.

That followed several attempts by Hibiki, AGT's largest minority unitholder with a 7.6 per cent stake, to block the sale while alleging the initial offered price was too low. One of those attempts involved Hibiki and more than 50 other minority unitholders calling for an EGM to take place on Aug 18.

The trustee-manager also said last Friday that Hibiki and another unitholder, Santa Lucia Asset Management with a 3.1 per cent stake in AGT, had irrevocably undertaken to vote in favour of the resolutions to approve the proposed divestment. They planned to withdraw their EGM requisition notice by Tuesday.

AGT units last traded at 65 Singapore cents on Aug 4, before it called for a trading halt on Aug 5. The halt was lifted on Aug 8.