Indonesia’s Widjaja family’s Sinarmas Land offer wins 90% acceptance, triggering compulsory acquisition

[SINGAPORE] Lyon Investments – controlled by the Widjaja family, one of Indonesia’s wealthiest clans – has crossed the 90 per cent acceptance threshold in its offer for Singapore-listed Sinarmas Land.

This triggers the right of compulsory acquisition of all the shares of shareholders who have not accepted the offer, paving the way for the delisting of the mainboard-listed property developer from the Singapore Exchange.

In a regulatory filing on Monday (May 26), Lyon Investments announced it had secured valid acceptances for 1.14 billion shares, or 26.85 per cent, of Sinarmas Land’s total share base.

The offeror and its concert parties owned about 2.99 billion shares, or 70.3 per cent of the company, before the launch of the offer.

This means that Lyon Investments has now secured over 90 per cent of the shares it did not already own before the offer – triggering the right of compulsory acquisition under the Companies Act.

Lyon Investments now controls 97.14 per cent of Sinarmas Land.

The offeror said it intends to exercise its right of compulsory acquisition at the revised offer price, and delist the company thereafter.

The announcement comes after the investment entity declared on May 18 that its offer price of S$0.375 a share was final, following a 21 per cent increase of S$0.065 over the initial bid.

On May 5, the Securities Investors Association (Singapore), also known as Sias, criticised the initial offer of S$0.31 a share as “exploitative”. Sias said it had concerns about the manner in which the company’s unlisted assets were valued.

On May 16, Sinarmas released a letter which contained, among other things, the independent financial adviser W Capital Markets’ opinion that on balance, the financial terms of the revised offer price are “fair and reasonable”.

As at 4 pm on Tuesday, shares of Sinarmas Land were trading 1.3 per cent or S$0.005 lower at S$0.37.