Finance·Southeast Asia 500Great Eastern to resume trading as delisting bid failsBY Chanyaporn ChanjaroenBY Gabrielle NgBY BloombergBY Chanyaporn ChanjaroenBY Gabrielle NgSEE MORE The deal’s failure is a setback for OCBC, which has owned the majority of Great Eastern since 2004 and has tried multiple times to take the 117-year-old insurer private.
Ore Huiying—Bloomberg via Getty ImagesGreat Eastern Holdings Ltd.
’s s are expected to resume trading in Singapore, after the insurer failed to win enough holder support for its delisting plan that was backed by Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.
5% of the insurer’s minority holders voted for a delisting but that fell short of the threshold needed to take Great Eastern private, according to a company filing on Tuesday after an extraordinary general meeting.
As a result, OCBC’s S$900 million ($704 million) offer has lapsed, the country’s second-largest lender, said in a separate filing.
The deal’s failure is a setback for OCBC, which has owned the majority of Great Eastern since 2004 and has tried multiple times to take the 117-year-old insurer private.
OCBC chief executive officer Helen Wong has said that it wanted to fully integrate its banking, wealth management and insurance es, and that owning all of Great Eastern would help imve its holder returns.
To support Great Eastern’s delisting posal, OCBC had offered S$30. 15 a for the 6. 28% of the insurer it does not own. It imved the offer by 17. 8% last month from its previous bid.
Great Eastern, one of the largest insurers in Singapore and Malaysia, has total assets of more than S$100 billion with 16 million-plus policyholders. OCBC’s s closed up 0. 8% on Tuesday, versus a 0.
4% gain in the broader Straits Times Index.
“Whether OCBC owns 94% or 100%, it has a minimal impact on earnings or strategy as they are already in control,” said Jayden Vantarakis, head of equity re for Southeast Asia at Macquarie Capital, adding that the market’s view of the lender won’t change with the outcome.
Trading in Great Eastern had been susp since July 2024, after OCBC failed to obtain a sufficient level for a delisting or compulsory acquisition with its previous offer.
Its bid this year was still lower than the insurer’s 2024 embedded value of S$38. 08 a, a metric used to value insurers elsewhere and cited by resistant minority holders urging a higher offer.
Great Eastern will issue new s to meet the exchange’s listing rules.
After the issue, OCBC’s holding in Great Eastern will be around 88% from the current level of 94%, the insurer said in an earlier statement. It did not vide any date for the resumption of trading.
The insurer has contributed an average of S$700 million a year in net fit to OCBC over the past 10 years, translating to an average of 15% of OCBC’s annual fit over this period, the bank has said.