The shares of Big Orient Holdings Limited are expected to resume trading in Singapore after insurance companies fail to win enough shareholders in the Deleisting program backed by a foreign-Bank China company.
According to a company filing filed by a company after an extraordinary general meeting, about 63.5% of the insurer’s minority shareholders voted for the cost-effectiveness, but not enough to get the threshold for privateness in the Greater East. As a result, OCBC’s SGD 900 million (USD 704 million) offer has failed, the country’s second largest lender said in another filing.
The failure of the deal is a setback for OCBC, which has owned most of the majority since 2004 and has tried to take the 117-year-old insurance company several times Private. OCBC CEO Helen Wong said it hopes to fully integrate its banking, wealth management and insurance businesses, and that owning all of the companies in Big Orient will help boost its shareholder returns.
To support Great Eastern’s proposal, OCBC has provided S$30.15 per share for 6.28% of non-owned insurance companies. Its offer has increased by 17.8% since last month.
Greater Oriental is one of the largest insurance companies in Singapore and Malaysia, with total assets of over S$100 billion and more than 16 million policy holders. OCBC shares closed up 0.8% on Tuesday, while growing 0.4% in the broader Straits Time Index.
“Whether OCBC has 94% or 100%, it has little impact on earnings or strategies because they are already in control,” said Jayden Vantarakis, head of Southeast Asia equity research at Macquarie Capital, adding that market perceptions of Lender will not change with the latest results.
Since July 2024, Big East deals have been suspended, with OCBC failing to obtain sufficient levels to obtain a downgrade or mandatory acquisition of previous offers. Its latest bid is still below the insurer’s 2024 embedded value this year, at $38.08 per share, a measure used to evaluate insurers elsewhere and cited by Resistance Force Minority shareholders Urge higher quotes.
Great Eastern will issue new shares to meet the exchange’s listing rules. In an earlier statement, the insurer said that after the stake issue, OCBC’s holdings in the Big East will be about 94% or about 88% higher than the current level. It does not provide any date for resuming transactions.
The bank said insurance companies contributed about S$700 million to OCBC annually over the past 10 years, accounting for an average of about 15% of OCBC’s annual profits during that period.
