Asia Sentinel

My attention was drawn to the following blog post: http://ooibenghooi.blogspot.com/2011/11/apland-egm.html This is about the development in the Proposed Disposal of the entire business and undertakings, including all of the assets and liabilities of APLAND. APLAND has issued Notice of Adjourned Meeting and Letter to Shareholders on 8 Nov 2011.

"Pay television operator Astro All Asia Networks plc is best taken private at this stage of its development, the chief of its major shareholder Khazanah Nasional Bhd said. "We feel in its current stage of development with high definition television and the Indian investment, it is time when it needs to be taken off the market. I think you get better value ... but the debt market gets developed as a result," managing director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar told reporters on the sidelines of the Invest Malaysia conference yesterday. "But you can see the track record of the Usaha Tegas group ... they eventually go back for a listing," he said, referring to the recent re-listing of the group's Maxis Bhd. Khazanah, which owns about 21.4 per cent of Astro, together with other owners Usaha Tegas Sdn Bhd and Bumiputera foundations had on March 17 offered to buy out minority shareholders of Astro at RM4.30 a share. Astro closed up 2 sen at RM4.28 yesterday."  

   

  (Amended version, I received very interesting feedback, changes in red)

   

 

A very important article about the increasing influence of Government Linked Investment Companies and their worrisome implications.  

Above is the graph of the share price of AirAsia and Malaysian Airlines System (MAS), the vertical line represents August 5, 2011, just before the announcement of the share swap between AirAsia's parent and Khazanah Nasional.  

PMI had to find an independent director, only one was not enough according to the rules. More can be found here about the issues involved: http://cgmalaysia.blogspot.com/search/label/PMI PMI might have had some problems finding one, because they were more than one month late finding one. So what did PMI do? They just converted an non-independent director to an independent director, problem solved.

Sime Darby does not need to make a GO for E&O. Some shareholders will receive RM 2.30 for their shares, others can sell them in the market for RM 1.30. Is that fair? "In finance, shareholders' equity (or stockholders' equity, shareholders' funds, shareholders' capital employed) is ownership equity spread out among shareholders whose class of share may have special rights attached to it. If all shareholders are in one and the same class, they share equally in ownership equity from all perspectives." What happened reminds me of "Animal Farm" of George Orwell: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others". One more aspect is never revealed. If I were a major shareholder, and somebody would come to me and would offer to buy almost all my shares, my first question would be "Why not all shares?". The answer is of course that if all shares were bought of all three parties, Sime Darby would have to make a GO. "Tham had disposed of a 12.2% stake, which left him holding 5.15%, Wan Azmi pared his stake to 2.9% after disposing 9.1% while GK Goh Holdings Ltd sold 9.5%, cutting its stake to 3.5%." Or would really none have asked this question? From The Edge: