Great Eastern Holding

[money]

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapor...te-4325816

Delist offer. Nice

[money]

But offer price looks ridiculously low compared to embedded value. Feels to me like a lowball offer

[weijian]

So, OCBC last offered 16sgd for the remaining 17% of shares 18 years ago and got ~5%, leaving about 12.1% public float. 6 months ago, there was a 0.5% bloc sale reducing public float to 11.6%, or 1.6% from trading suspension. Depending on IFA's opinion and recent BSL-BP case study, is there a merger arbitrage opportunity?

On reflection, minorities have been "making waves" recently in SGX (BWI and now GE). Nah, these has to be coincidences because the Offerer has mentioned that it is a "natural progression".

OCBC MAKES S$1.4 BILLION OFFER FOR GREAT EASTERN

The Offer price of S$25.60 represents a 36.9% premium over Great Eastern’s last traded price of S$18.70 and premiums of 38.6%, 40.0% and 42.4% over the one-month, three-month and 12-month periods up to and including the last trading date of 9 May 2024.

OCBC Group Chief Executive Officer Ms Helen Wong said: “The Offer is a natural progression of OCBC’s strategy. We have moved intentionally to build up a strong wealth management franchise by hiring the best people and instituting best practices and processes, and raising our investment in Great Eastern. We have been looking at opportunities to best use our capital and believe the Offer allows us to deploy our resources into a key business that is expected to be earnings accretive to OCBC.”

Ms Wong added: “This is not the first time that we are making an offer to increase our investment in Great Eastern – first in 2004, followed by 2006.

https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/Media%20R...eID=802887

[weijian]

BT Ben Paul invited our OPMI hero Mr Ong for an interview and he revealed more details about OCBC's rejection. In essence, as per Mr Ong - (1) OCBC didn't answer his request when he asked them "is anything missing?" during the submission of his request. (2) When they rejected him, they told him to seek his own legal advice.

In the meanwhile, Ben Paul also flagged out the below statement in the official statement lodged with SGX which I missed out (as I thought it was the typical boilerplate response at the end of every release)

In the meantime, shareholders are advised to exercise caution when trading in GEH shares as there is no certainty that requests made to the Company through the media before the Company has been able to first review the requests and provide a formal response, will materialise.

With these, we can try to connect the dots - On hindsight, OPMIs made the wrong move to publicize their actions earlier than they should have done. But on the other hand, one cannot really blame them for "the rush" because after all, Mr Ong has revealed that they had been engaging them since 2020.

BT Mark to Market: Behind the minority-investor movement at Great Eastern (Ep 41)

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/podcast...tern-ep-41

After our OPMI hero Mr Ong, the latest BT Mark to Market podcast invited another OPMI hero, SGX RegCo czar Tan Boon Gin.

Our RegCo czar has stated 1 key barrier for OPMIs to table resolutions during AGM, even though they meet the requirements  - They have to send the resolutions to ALL shareholders but PDPA stops them from doing so. So without the co-operation of the company, it is impossible to do so. That could be what SIAS is referring as "overly legalistic" as to GEH's treatment on Mr Ong?

In time to come, companies will be complied to help OPMIs make more noise against themselves. There will probably be more delisting to come, as what we have recently witnessed.

S1E43: BT Mark to Market: SGX RegCo focuses on shareholder value (Ep 43)

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM...2FzdC5yc3M=