Company briefs: Ascendas Reit

Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) has launched a private placement and preferential offering to raise gross proceeds of about $1.2 billion.

This will go into financing its potential and proposed overseas acquisitions, including the US$560.2 million (S$754 million) purchase of two office properties in San Francisco that was also announced yesterday.

Under the equity fund-raising exercise, the placement's issue price will be between $3.026 and $3.121 for each new unit. The preferential offering to unit holders will carry an issue price of between $2.96 and $3.05 per new unit.

THE BUSINESS TIMES

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Sunningdale Tech

Sunningdale Tech's chairman Koh Boon Hwee is teaming up with Novo Tellus PE Fund 2 to make an offer for the precision plastic components maker at $1.55 in cash per share via a scheme of arrangement.

Mr Koh's entity, Sunrise Technology Investment Holding II, and a subsidiary of Novo Tellus PE Fund 2 hold a 64 per cent and 36 per cent stake, respectively, in the offeror company. Scheme shareholders can choose between receiving $1.55 in cash per share, or 1,550 shares in Sunrise Technology Investment Holding (Cayman), the holding company of the offeror, at 0.1 cent each.

THE BUSINESS TIMES

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JC Penney

An American judge on Monday approved a deal to rescue JC Penney from bankruptcy proceedings precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas approved the deal, which will allow the 118-year-old retailer to emerge from bankruptcy before the upcoming holiday season, the company said in a statement. The rescue deal is expected to save approximately 60,000 jobs.

The approval comes a week after JC Penney's lawyers announced a settlement with nearly all of its creditor groups.

REUTERS