Koufu privatisation offer turns unconditional, crosses threshold for compulsory acquisition

AN offer from Koufu Group VL6 : VL6 0% 's founders to privatise the food-court operator has turned unconditional, with the total shares owned, controlled or agreed to be acquired by the offeror Dominus Capital and its concert parties amounting to 90.13 per cent of total shares as at 6 pm on Thursday (Jan 27), the company announced in a bourse filing.

Dominus Capital is an investment company incorporated last Oct 7 by husband-wife duo - Koufu's executive chairman and chief executive Pang Lim and executive director Ng Hoon Tien.

UOB, which is acting as the financial advisor to Dominus Capital, said that the offeror has received valid acceptances in respect of 498.3 million offer shares, which translates to 90.12 per cent of the total number of issued shares.

The offer was declared unconditional in all respects on Thursday, as the offeror and its concert parties now hold more than half the total number of shares in issue.

The date of the close of the offer has been extended to 5.30 pm on Feb 23, from the same time on Feb 9 previously.

Dominus Capital has also garnered enough valid acceptances to cross the 90 per cent shareholding threshold for a compulsory acquisition. It now intends to exercise its right of compulsory acquisition to acquire all of Koufu's shares at its offer price of S$0.77 per share in cash.

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Dominus Capital will despatch the relevant documents, as well as the prescribed notice under the Companies Act in relation to the exercise of its right of compulsory acquisition, in due course to dissenting shareholders.

When the compulsory acquisition is completed, Koufu will be delisted from the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

It was previously said that delisting Koufu from the SGX mainboard will give the offeror and the company greater control and management flexibility in deploying available resources, and facilitating strategic initiatives or operational changes.

Shareholders will also have a clean cash exit opportunity to realise their investment, Koufu said; it added that Koufu's trading volume has been "generally low".

Shares of Koufu closed on Thursday at S$0.765, down 0.7 per cent or S$0.005.