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By Euan Paulo C. Ańonuevo, Reporter
THE Ashmore Group, through its unit SEA Refinery
Holdings B.V., has offered to buy out other shareholders of Petron
Corp.
The move comes on the heels of the UK-based
group’s acquisition of Saudi Aramco’s 40-percent stake in the
Philippines’ largest oil refiner.
In a report filed before the Securities and
Exchange Commission, Petron said that SEA Refinery has issued a
tender offer of P6.531 per share for the refiner’s remaining
shares from June 16 to July 14.
The Ashmore unit issued the tender offer in
accordance with the Securities Regulation Code, which requires such
an offer for groups acquiring at least 30 percent of a listed
company’s equity over a period of 12 months.
Aramco, through unit Aramco Overseas Corp.,
earlier agreed to sell its entire Petron shareholdings to SEA
Refinery for $550 million.
State-owned Philippine National Oil Co. holds
the same amount of shares in Petron, while the remaining shares are
listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).
Francis Lim, PSE president, earlier doused
apprehensions that the tender offer of the Ashmore Group may run
afoul of a provision of the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation Act
of 1998, which requires that at least 10 percent of oil companies’
shareholdings should be in public hands.
“The provision applies only to initial public
offerings . . . at the time the Oil Deregulation Act came into law,
Petron was already a listed company and therefore [was] no longer
bound to offer their shares to the public,” he said.
The tender offer price set by SEA Refinery is
equivalent to the price it paid for Aramco’s Petron shares, and is
also based on the closing exchange rate of $1 to P44.43 on
Wednesday.
Petron’s shares closed higher Friday at P6.2
from P5.9 previously.
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