The Colombo bourse on Friday saw the highest turnover of Rs 4.1 billion with Carsons Cumberbatch Group (CARS) shedding its controlling stakes in some of their oil palm firms, to GoodHope Asia Holdings Ltd. which a fully owned subsidiary of the company.
Analysts said the CARS deals led to nearly Rs 4 billion from the total turnover for the day. “The Carsons deal contributed to the highest volume for this year with more than 31 million shares transacting during the day,” an analyst said.
CARS sold some of Shalimar, Selinsing, Good Hope, Indo Malay and Equity. “There was some 3,590,438 corresponding to 51.30% of Indo Malay being sold, 3,705,082 shares of Good Hope sold which was 53.93% of this company, Selinsing PLC seeing some 3,482,497 shares trading hands equal to 50.18% and Shalimar (Malay)PLC seeing some 5,205,606 shares corresponding to 75.01%,” the analyst said.
After trading on Friday the company announced that this was done in line with the company strategy to consolidate its oil palm business in South East Asia under a regional plantation holding firm. The stock exchange announcement also said that these transfers will not show an effective change in the shareholding structure of these firms as the major stakes are still held by CARS.
In late February CARS together with its subsidiaries, Ceylon Investment (CINV) and Ceylon Guardian (GUAR), divested its stakes in Union Assurance (UAL), Ceylon Cold Stores (CCS) and John Keells PLC (JKL) resulting in major capital gains for the Group. CCS and JKL were accounted as long term investments in CARS group, GUAR group and CINV Balance Sheets. And UAL was accounted as a long term investment in GUAR and CINV while in CARS group it was accounted as an associate. JKH bought 13,864,965 shares (37.0%) of UAL at Rs.72 per share, 4,361,311 shares (20.2%) of CCS at Rs.115 per share and 1,657,300 shares (10.9%) of John Keells PLC (JKL) at Rs.60 per share for a total Rs 1.59 billion. These acquisitions saw JKH's shareholding in JKL increase to 86.9% UAL increase to 73.9% and CCS increase to 80.5%. CARS share stood at Rs 120 - up by Rs 3 at close. The All Share index on Friday was marginally up by 0.72% to close at 1,627.70 with Milanka seeing an increase of 0.43% to close at 1,675.29. |
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