THE industrial safety footwear manufacturer King's Safetywear announced on Wednesday that it would be delisted from the Singapore Exchange's mainboard on Friday.

The privatisation follows the completion of the compulsory acquisition exercise by Safe Step Group on Wednesday.

Safe Step Group now holds all the issued ordinary shares of King's Safetywear, a company that began here 43 years ago.

Safe Step offered 43.8 cents in cash per share in September and accumulated a holding of 98.95 per cent. This triggered a mandatory takeover for any stock it did not own.

Its offer price was 12.31 per cent higher than King's last traded price of 39 cents before the buyout offer.

Safe Step is majority-owned by the Navis Group, which is a private and public equity fund management company with offices in South-East Asia, Hong Kong, India and Australia.

The executive chairman of King's Safetywear, Mr Frankie Chan, said: 'King's Safetywear has grown to become the dominant player in the region's industrial safety footwear market, and has expanded our footprint to cover key markets in Australia, Europe and the Middle East.

'This privatisation is a major step forward in the group's evolution and will bring us closer to our vision of becoming a global safetywear company.

'With the backing of the Navis Group, we now have strengthened management and financial resources to pursue our strategic growth plans as well as to ride out the current global economic slowdown.'

The Singapore-based group makes leading brands of industrial safety footwear in Asia-Pacific and Europe.

Its products are widely used in heavy and light industries, including the energy and ship fields, aviation engineering, mining, manufacturing and automotive industries and construction.