United Engineers loses free float, to delist after Yanlord offer closes

UNITED Engineers (UE) on Friday morning said it has lost its free float and will be delisted after the close of Chinese developer Yanlord Land Group's mandatory conditional cash offer.

As at 5pm on Thursday, Yanlord owned, controlled or has agreed to acquire about 90.27 per cent of UE's ordinary shares.

That means that less than 10 per cent of UE shares are now held by the public.

The S$2.70-a-share offer remains open for acceptances till 5.30pm on Dec 30. The Singapore Exchange will suspend trading of UE shares at the offer's close.

UE ordinary shareholders who may not want to hold shares in an unlisted company should consider accepting the offer or exercising their rights to require Yanlord to acquire their shares at the final offer price, UE said on Friday.

Yanlord had said on Dec 16 that it intends to exercise its rights of compulsory acquisition.

It also announced on Dec 16 that it plans to delist UE, which reverses its initial proposal in October to keep UE public.

Yanlord had launched a mandatory offer for UE in late October at S$2.60 a share, after buying out the consortium partners, Perennial and Heng Yue, with whom it had made an earlier joint bid for UE in 2017. It later raised its offer price to S$2.70 per share, which values UE at S$1.72 billion.

When Yanlord revived its takeover bid in October, its wholly-owned subsidiary Yanlord Investment (Singapore) had held 35.27 per cent of UE ordinary shares and 97.71 per cent of UE preference shares.

UE shares were unchanged at S$2.69 as at 9.54am on Friday after the announcement, while Yanlord was up S$0.01 or 0.8 per cent to S$1.20.