28 May 2019
The Editor
The Edge Financial Daily
Dear Editor,
We refer to the article entitled "ACE need not exit Apex as SC varies decision again" published in The Edge Financial Daily dated 27 May 2019, which contained several inaccuracies.
The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) would like to clarify that it has not made any “u-turn” in relation to its conditional approval for the proposed merger between Apex Equity Holdings Bhd’s wholly-owned JF Apex Securities and Mercury Securities. The decision for ACE Investment Bank to exit Apex Equity remains but it is now decoupled from the merger approval.
As Apex Equity announced on 22 and 26 February 2019, the SC had on 21 February 2019 imposed the following conditions on JF Apex in relation to the proposed merger:
- Representatives of ACE Investment Bank shall cease to be members on the board of Apex Equity on completion of the proposed merger;
- ACE IB to sell down its shareholdings in Apex Equity to below 15% within one month from the date of completion of the proposed merger;
- ACE IB to fully dispose of its shareholding in Apex within six months from the date of completion of the proposed merger; and
- There being no adverse record from the vetting which is currently pending.
Following an appeal by JF Apex for the SC to review the conditions (a) to (c) stated above, the SC decided on 27 May 2019 to vary the conditions imposed on JF Apex by decoupling the conditions from the proposed merger.
ACE IB will now have to ensure that it meets the conditions (a) to (c) above, and the SC will pursue the compliance of these conditions with ACE IB separately.
In this regard, the SC’s approval of the proposed merger is now conditional only upon there being no adverse record from the vetting.
