SINGAPORE (Sept 3): UMS Holdings has been steadily increasing its hold on JEP Holdings, a listed company that it controls. On Aug 27, it acquired two million JEP shares via a married deal at 19.5 cents each. On the same day, UMS also bought 100,000 shares at 20 cents each from the open market, bringing its stake in the company to just over 111.2 million shares, or 28.95%.
UMS had made several rounds of purchases in the fortnight leading up to Aug 27. It started buying on Aug 15, snapping up 380,800 shares at 19.408 cents each. It bought 70,000 shares at 19.564 cents each on Aug 16; 263,000 shares at 19.99 cents each on Aug 17; 606,500 shares at 19.963 cents each on Aug 20; 223,700 shares at 20 cents each on Aug 23 and 132,700 shares at 20 cents each on Aug 24.
Executive chairman Andy Luong assumed control of JEP in January. Via UMS, he bought a 29.5% stake in JEP for $28.2 million cash from JEP’s founder and former executive chairman Joe Lau and executive director Zee Hoong Huay. Following the conversion of warrants into shares in March, UMS’s stake was trimmed to 28.77%.
