Watchdog sets deadline for F&N brouhaha

Shareholders’ wait ends soon.

IG Markets Singapore noted:

A fall in retails sales of 1.1% didn’t help sentiment across the island although there was one sliver of good news for Fraser & Neave shareholders.

The SIC shares watchdog has ruled that this Sunday will be the deadline for the increasingly dull takeover battle for F&N. It is willing to accept a revised bid on Monday and a counter-bid on Tuesday.

The F&N share price has inched back towards $9.70 a share indicating the optimism shareholders still have that an improved bid can be tabled. But the big question if this unlikely scenario does happen is why did it take a rival bidder so long?

All traders have seen are two rival foreign companies use F&N as a play thing to raise their own profile without any serious conviction to acquire the property and drinks conglomerate. The low-ball offers come across as disingenuous and many are surprised a third party hasn’t sneaked in and stole their thunder.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia