AGT executives will launch bid to buy back shares

SASKATOON Shareholders in one of the world’s largest lentil companies are expected to vote early next year on a proposal to sell their shares back to its executives for $18 each in a proposed privatization deal.

AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. said Friday that a group of its executives led by CEO Murad al-katib had reached an agreement to begin buying back the Regina-based company’s shares.

The announcement came almost five months after AGT and al-katib unveiled a proposal to privatize the publicly-traded corporation, which lost $36 million on revenues totalling $1.7 billion last year.

The proposal came as AGT’S share price, which peaked at around $40 in 2016, languished below $20.

Under the deal, which is backed by Toronto-based financial giant Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., Fairfax, Point North Capital Inc. and some AGT executives, including al-katib, would retain their holdings in the corporation.

Al-katib and the other executives collectively own about 17 per cent of the Regina-based company, which was founded in 2003 and went public four years later. Fairfax and Point North collectively own an additional 10 per cent.

In a news release Friday, the company said fair market value of the shares was between $17 and $21, and a special committee struck to consider the proposal unanimously determined it was in the company’s best interests.

Based on that recommendation, the company’s board is asking shareholders to approve the transaction at a meeting to be held sometime in “early 2019,” the news release states.