Fresh offer for Citrus Leisure warrant holders

Wednesday, 17 October 2012 00:25 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Citrus Leisure Plc has been granted approval by the SEC to make a fresh chance to complete the exercising of warrants in full.

During the stipulated exercising time, in June, following the majority not seeking to exchange their warrants to shares Citrus sought concurrence of the SEC to issue 16.79 million shares to two warrant holders namely Divasa Equity Ltd., and George Steuart Engineering Ltd.

At its Commissioners’ meeting on 8 October, the SEC had considered the application made by Citrus and granted approval to exempt Divasa Equity and George Steuart Engineering from having to make a mandatory offer to shareholders of Citrus Leisure in the exercise of the warrants acquired by them, subject to the fulfilment of three conditions as undertaken by the Company in its submissions to SEC via a letter dated 25 September 2012.

The three conditions are that 1) Citrus Leisure sends out a further letter giving an opportunity to all the warrant holders who did not exercise their rights at the time of closing, another chance to exercise the warrants in order to give the warrant holders the benefit of the current price of a share. The time to respond to further letter to warrant holders to be kept open for seven market days; 2) that Divasa Equity and George Steuart Engineering together with persons acting in concert if upon conversion of the warrants were to acquire more than 2% of the voting rights of Citrus Leisure, they will sell out such excess within a period of one month from the date of allotment to comply with the spirit of the law in terms of Rule 31(1)(b) of the Takeovers and Mergers Code and 3) that all the said parties will until such time the shares in excess are sold shall acquiesce their right to exercise the voting rights attached to the shares in excess to comply with the spirit of the law under Rule 31(1)(b) of the Code.

Citrus was planning to raise Rs. 943.8 million via the conversion of warrants into shares but managed only to raise Rs. 36 million in June. The exercising price of the warrants was Rs. 30 whereas in between mid and end June it was trading around Rs. 23 and Rs. 27 levels. Yesterday Citrus closed at Rs. 30, down from Rs. 31.20 on Monday.