Yangzijiang Shipbuilders, together with its nonexecutive director Yu Kebing and an unnamed Middle East investor, have offered to buy Singaporebased PPL Holdings for US$155 million , the company said on Saturday.
When the deal is completed, Yangzijiang will own 50.1 per cent of PPL Holdings, while the Middle East investor and Mr Yu will hold 45 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively. PPL Holdings is currently owned by mainboardlisted Baker Technology. To fund its acquisition of a 50.1-per-cent stake, Yangzijiang said it will issue some 83.6 million new shares at $1.295 each to the Middle East investor to raise the equivalent of about US$77.7 million.
PPL Holdings now owns a 15 per cent stake in PPL Shipyard, which designs and constructs shallow-and deep-water offshore drilling rigs. The remaining 85 per cent of PPL Shipyard is owned by Sembcorp Marine
Yangzijiang Shipbuilding (Holdings) Ltd. is a large shipbuilding enterprise in China with Jiangsu Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Ltd. and Jiangsu New Yangzi Shipbuilding Ltd. as a core. With a history stretching back as to 1956 in shipbuilding, the company is the first shipbuilding enterprise in China that entered he stock market in Singapore, becoming one of the Straits Times index stocks in the Singapore Exchange. The Company covers area of 2.2 million M2 and a wharf line of 3,000m, and employs over 10,000 staff and workers.
Equipped with one large dry dock and five large and medium-sized slipways, the Company boasts the shipbuilding capacity over 1 million DWT annually in terms of ship tonnage. The main stream products of the Company range from large and medium-sized containerships, large bulk carriers to, medium multi-purpose ships.
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Source: yzjship,April 20, 2010;