Posted on 10 May 2016
Lysaght’s board said in a Bursa Malaysia announcement that the company was notified last Friday that Chew Bros had acquired the stake in LMSB.
The announcement clarifies the disagreement among the board members as to whether Chew Brothers or LMSB is the ultimate holding company.
Before the announcement, publicly available records showed LMSB as the controlling shareholder of Lysaght with a 55.14% stake while Chew Brothers was the single largest shareholder of LMSB with a 40% stake.
The board said the stake acquisition by Chew Brothers made it the ultimate holding company of Lysaght.
The brief announcement yesterday closes one episode in a long-drawn out disagreement that started with the death of Lysaght’s founder, Chew Kar Heing in February 2014.
His eldest daughter, Annie Chew Meu Jong (pic), emerged as a substantial shareholder in the company via an indirect 55.26% stake in Lysaght, in September the same year. Meu Jong is also managing director (MD) of Chew Brothers.
Reports said that the shareholding structures of Lysaght and LMSB “clearly” show that whoever controls the latter will eventually control the former.
There have been speculation of a shareholder tussle between Meu Jong and Liew Hoi Foo, Lysaght’s MD and husband of Mee Lee, second daughter of Kar Heing.
Kar Heing had passed the baton to Liew when he retired in 2004. However, Meu Jong has denied that there was such a dispute.
Meu Jong had also said the reappointment of Liew as MD in the company’s AGM held in May last year showed a clear indication that there was no family feud over Lysaght’s leadership.
However, in April this year, Liew resigned as Lysaght’s MD after 13 years.
To make matters more confusing, Meu Jong had earlier also notified the company that she was no longer a substantial shareholder in Lysaght after realising that her position as Chew Brothers MD does not deem her to hold equity interest in LMSB.
The reported tension between Meu Jong and Liew apparently surfaced when Meu Jong objected to Lysaght’s proposal in May 2014 for a share split, bonus issue and free warrants, which resulted in the plan being aborted in March 2015.
