SINGAPORE (Nov 22): UOL Group on Tuesday night announced the mandatory unconditional cash offer for all the shares in Singapore Land that it does not already own at $11.85 each.

The offer for SingLand, 99.7% owned by UIC, was triggered under the chain rule of Singapore's takeover code after UOL raised its stake in United Industrial Corp (UIC) to more than 50%, gaining statutory control of the latter.

SingLand was delisted from the Singapore Exchange in 2014. Under the 2014 offer, the base offer price for each SingLand share was $9.40 in cash. The current offer price therefore represents a premium of 26.1% to the 2014 offer price.

The current offer price is also at a premium to the aggregate distribution of $9.40 per share under SingLand's 2016 capital reduction and cash distribution.

UOL intends to carry on the existing business of SingLand and presently has no intention to introduce any major changes to its business.

In a Tuesday night filing, UOL announced it had, through its subsidiary UOL Equity Investments, bought 730,978 UIC shares in a series of on-market and off-market acquisitions on Tuesday at an average of about $3.31 each. This brought UOL’s stake in UIC to 716.4 million shares or 50.03% of the total number of UIC shares.

This story, written by PC Lee, first appeared on The Edge Singapore.