UBS increases stake in Silver Heritage to 11pct

Jul 13, 2017 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck, World  

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Banking group UBS AG has increased its stake in Australia-listed gaming operator Silver Heritage Group Ltd to 10.9 percent, the latter company said in a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange on Thursday. The stake - held via UBS Securities Australia Pty - turns the banking group into a substantial shareholder of the casino firm.

UBS currently owns 44,201,160 shares in Silver Heritage, after acquiring 39,128,410 shares on July 10, according to the filing.

Silver Heritage operates casinos in Vietnam and Nepal. It is currently building the Tiger Palace Resort Bhairahawa – the company’s first purpose-built, self-managed casino resort in Nepal near the country’s border with India. The company estimated that the final revised budget for the construction project is US$51.8 million. It is expecting a phased opening of the property starting in September 2017.

In a separate filing on Thursday, Silver Heritage said Credit Suisse Group AG – via Credit Suisse Equities (Australia) Ltd – has acquired 23.2 million shares in the company, for a total consideration of AUD1.16 million (US$887,553). Credit Suisse now controls a 6.74-percent stake in Silver Heritage.

Silver Heritage announced on June 30 that it was launching a fully underwritten accelerated renounceable entitlement offer to raise funds to support the completion of Tiger Palace. The offer allowed eligible shareholders to subscribe for two new Silver Heritage shares for each existing share held as of July 4, at an offer price of AUD0.05.

That offer targeted gross proceeds of approximately US$14.4 million. The company has completed the institutional part of its entitlement offer and the retail component of the offer opened on July 7 and is scheduled to close on July 26,  the casino firm said in a previous filing. The money would also provide working capital, and pay the costs of the entitlement offer.

In a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange on July 6, Silver Heritage said Nepal’s central bank granted the permission for the company’s investment unit in the country to transfer NPR5 billion (US$48.3 million) cross-border to “comfortably [cover] the remaining capital requirement expenditure within Nepal to complete and open Tiger Palace Resort Bhairahawa”.

Silver Heritage said in a filing in February that the construction of the Tiger Palace was facing delays, partly due to “a shortage of liquidity in the Nepal banking system and unanticipated delays in the issuance of approval for Silver Heritage to increase the equity ceiling of its corporate investment vehicle in Nepal”.

(Updated at 10am, July 14)

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