Andrew Tan, chairman and chief executive Alliance Global Group Inc, has sold 278 million shares of the company’s common stock that he owned, valued at PHP28.30 each (US$0.65) according to a filing on Friday with the Philippine Stock Exchange.
The firm, one of the Philippines’ biggest conglomerates, is a 50:50 joint venture partner with Genting Hong Kong Ltd in the Resorts World Manila casino resort (pictured) next door to Manila International Airport.
The total value of the share sale deal was equivalent to US$180.6 million. Mr Tan retains a direct interest in 63,684,350 pieces of Alliance Global common stock according to the filing.
The firm said in a filing that the transaction “was conducted in response to a reverse enquiry from one of the largest asset managers globally”. UBS AG acted as sole placement agent for the transaction. Typically a reverse inquiry involves an investor approaching a bank or other financial institution looking for a security of a particular type and of a particular underlying asset.
The sale price of PHP28.30 per share represented a five-percent discount to the stock’s closing price of PHP29.80 Thursday. Alliance Global’s shares declined 3.7 percent on Friday to PHP28.70 each.
In late June Alliance Global announced it was reshuffling its casino holdings. It moved PHP10.43-billion worth of shares in Travellers International Hotel Group – the vehicle for its JV stake in Resorts World Manila – from Alliance Global unit Megaworld Corp to the parent firm.
On July 2, Genting Hong Kong announced to the Hong Kong bourse that its president David Chua Ming Huat had tendered his resignation and that his boss, Lim Kok Thay, the chairman of Genting Hong Kong’s parent, Malaysia’s Genting Bhd, had taken over as acting president with immediate effect.
Last year Travellers International postponed a share sale designed to raise money for a second casino resort in Manila, the US$1.1 billion Resorts World Bayshore project. In July 2013 the JV said it was instead allocating US$600 million to expand Resorts World Manila.
