March 19, 2013
China Fishery Group buys Copeinca's shares
China Fishery Group Limited announced that it has, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Grand Success Investment, entered into an agreement with Ocean Harvest S.L. for the purchase of 5,773,000 ordinary shares of Copeinca ASA.
Grand Success has also received a pre-acceptance for the voluntary cash offer announced on February 26, 2013 from Ocean Harvest covering 2,345,075 additional Copeinca shares ("Ocean Harvest Pre- Acceptance"). Ocean Harvest is currently the second largest shareholder of Copeinca with 13.9% of the issued shares.
The Ocean Harvest Transaction and Ocean Harvest Pre-Acceptance correspond to 9.9% and 4.0% of the issued shares of Copeinca, respectively, and for a total of 13.9%. This represents another strong endorsement of the Voluntary Cash Offer by Grand Success to shareholders of Copeinca. Ocean Harvest Transaction Grand Success has agreed to pay NOK53.85 (US$9.30) in cash for each Sale Share, in line with the terms of the Voluntary Cash Offer.
Total consideration payable for the sale shares at the offer price will be NOK310.9 million (US$54.8 million). China Fishery has also obtained an option over the shares of one of Copeinca's top three shareholders in respect of his 10.8% stake in Copeinca. Based on pre-soundings prior to the Offer, China Fishery also believes positive support exists from another group of shareholders representing 2.6% of Copeinca, although no formal commitments to accept have been obtained as yet.
Following the completion of the Ocean Harvest Transaction, the acquired Sale Shares (9.9%), together with the binding commitments (29.0%) and indicated positive support (2.6%), account for a total of 41.5% of the entire issued share capital of Copeinca prior to the start of the offer period.
