DUBAI: Kuwait’s Global Investment House will ask shareholders to approve delisting its shares from the bourse after failing to secure a regulatory waiver needed to implement its restructuring plan, it said yesterday.
Shareholders will meet on December 2 to discuss the move, according to a Global statement. The firm’s shares have not traded in Kuwait since last December, when the bourse suspended the stock after Global accumulated losses exceeding 75 percent of its capital.
Global shareholders in September approved a debt-for-equity style plan to create new special purpose vehicles that will carry the company’s debt. Under the plan, Global will offer new shares worth KD122.2m ($433m) to creditors.
However, Global said yesterday it had been unable to get an exemption to rules requiring it to allow existing shareholders to take part in any new equity offering.
“Global would like to assure its shareholders that the implementation of the restructuring plan is dependent on the exemption granted by the Capital Markets Authority from the mandatory offer rules to the special purpose vehicle that shall subscribe to Global’s capital increase,” the statement said.
Global, whose major shareholders include the governments of Kuwait and Dubai, is undergoing a second restructuring in three years after the company asked creditors in September 2011 to suspend payments under a $1.7 billion debt plan agreed in 2009.
Reuters
