Thomson Medical Group announced that it has on Sept 19 received a letter from the Singapore Exchange (SGX) advising that is has no objection to granting the company a period of three months until Dec 10 to explore options to restore the public float and the continued trading of its shares during this period.
The approval of the SGX is subject to the company monitoring the public float and trading activity in its shares on an ongoing basis, and making an immediate request for a trading halt if there is any indication of disorderly trading.
To recap, the group on Sept 12 announced that the percentage of the company’s shares held by public shareholders had been reduced to 9.98%, representing about 26.4 billion shares owned by over 8,000 public shareholders.
As the percentage of shares held by the public falls below SGX’s requisite of 10% of the total number of issued shares (excluding treasury shares), the company must immediately announce that fact and SGX may suspend the trading in shares.
SGX may grant three months, or longer, for the company to raise the percentage of shares in public hands to at least 10%, failing which the company may be removed from the official list of SGX.
Currently, Peter Lim Eng Hock holds the highest number of shares, which is equivalent to 89.58% stake in Thomson Medical.
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The Edge Singapore has previously reached out to Thomson Medical’s executive vice-chairman Kiat Lim, who is Peter’s son, and asked if Thomson Medical has plans to privatise or delist. Lim says: “The narrative is possible, but we are concentrated on trying to capture growth. We will do what makes sense and focus on value creation into the group. It has to be for a purpose.”
Shares in Thomson Medical closed at 5.9 cents on Sept 19.
