Oei Hong Leong's withdrawal blocks mandatory takeover offer for IPC

CATALIST-listed Asia-Pacific Strategic Investments Ltd said on Monday it will proceed to acquire shares in IPC Corp from certain existing shareholders, notwithstanding tycoon Oei Hong Leong's withdrawal from the offer.

Without Mr Oei's stake, however, Asia-Pacific Strategic Investments would only assume control of 11,894,084 shares, or about 13.95 per cent of IPC's share capital.

Since this is a less than 30 per cent stake in IPC, Asia-Pacific Strategic Investments will not be required to make a mandatory offer for IPC's remaining shares, under Singapore's takeover code.

Mr Oei has a 32.96 per cent stake in IPC.

Asia-Pacific Strategic Investments had planned to pay for the proposed acquisition by issuing 133 new, fully paid-up ordinary shares for every target share, with fractional entitlements to be rounded down to the nearest whole share.

This offer arrangement represented a 28.2 per cent premium to the last traded price of IPC shares on Jan 26 - the last trading day before the announcement - and a 6.6 per cent discount to the volume-weighted average price for the three-month period to Jan 26.