DISTELL
Trade report delay of Distell shares hints at high premium
It is still not clear why the parties involved in the R10bn trade in Distell shares waited six months to report the trade to the JSE as required by the exchange’s rules. A reluctance to reveal the steep premium involved could be the only answer. On Thursday, a spokesman for Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) subsidiary South African Breweries (SAB) confirmed the trade had initially been done off-market "due to the size and nature of the transaction". In the off-market trade on April 12 the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) acquired 26.4% of Distell, equivalent to 58.7-million shares, from Other Beverages Interests (OBI), a subsidiary of SAB. On April 12, Distell issued a Sens statement, as required by JSE regulations, disclosing that OBI had disposed of its 26.4% stake in Distell and the PIC now held a 27.6% beneficial interest in the company. There was no reference to the price at which the trade was done. The market had known since mid-December 2016 that the PIC was acquiring SAB’s...
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