Sale of stake in developer to help pay for Saipan casino

Jul 09, 2019 Newsdesk Latest News, Top of the deck, World  

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Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd says its controlling shareholder has agreed to sell about 9.79 percent of the company, and then lend the firm the proceeds in order to help with the cost of the casino resort the latter is building (pictured in a file photo) on the Pacific island of Saipan.

Imperial Pacific International Holdings told the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in writing on Monday that the controlling shareholder, Inventive Star Ltd, had agreed that day to give Guan Lian Capital Holdings Group Ltd the right to buy 14 billion of the almost 90.76 billion shares it held in Imperial Pacific International Holdings.

The announcement said the sale would reduce the Inventive Star stake in Imperial Pacific International Holdings to about 53.68 percent from about 63.47 percent.

The announcement gave no information about the buyer, Guan Lian Capital Holdings, or the price it will pay.

Inventive Star has given an undertaking that if the sale of shares goes through, it will offer the proceeds to Imperial Pacific International Holdings to “expand the construction and development” on Saipan, the announcement says.

A subsidiary of Imperial Pacific International Holdings, Imperial Pacific International LLC, is building a resort on Saipan, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States jurisdiction in the western Pacific Ocean.

Completion of an initial portion of the resort has been postponed several times as the developer sought money to finish building it.

In May Imperial Pacific International Holdings announced that Japan’s GCM Ltd would lend it US$500 million for the casino resort on Saipan.

That month a newspaper in the Northern Marianas reported that the subsidiary building the casino resort had asked the casino regulator there to put back the deadline for completion of a portion of the resort to August 21, 2022 from February 28, 2021.

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