SINGAPORE (June 10): Units in First Ship Lease (FSL) Trust, the business trust closed 31.8% higher at 5.8 cents on Monday with 1.9 million shares changing hands.
This is 0.05 cent shy of the 5.85 cents mandatory cash offer made by its sponsor FSL Holdings for all the units of the shipping trust it does not own.
FSL made the offer after taking up new units in FSL Trust via a recent preferential offering.
The offer price is 33% higher than the last transacted price of 4.4 cents on June 6, before FSL Trust called for a trading halt.
The offer was announced this morning before the market opening after which the trading halt was lifted.
The sponsor does not intend to delist the owner of containerships and tankers from the mainboard, but reserves the right to assess its options if FSL Trust's free float falls below below the 10% threshold.
Stathis Topouzoglou, non-independent non-executive chairman of the trust's manager FSL Trust Management, now has a deemed interest in 55.04% of FSL Trust units, versus 24.77% before.
FSL Trust, along with five other companies, was placed on the Singapore Exchange's watch list on June 6, after recording a volume-weighted six-month average price of less than 20 cents and a six-month average daily market capitalisation of less than $40 million.
FSL Trust is a business trust which owns a fleet of vessels comprising tankers, containerships and dry bulk carriers and leases them on long-term bareboat charters to international shipping companies. However, when charter rates sunk after 2008, hirers defaulted on their bunker payments, sending the trust into a tailspin.
