Chairman emerges biggest shareholder of Utusan Melayu

KUALA LUMPUR: Utusan Melayu (Malaysia) Bhd executive chairman Datuk Abd Aziz Sheikh Fadzir has acquired a 31.6 per cent stake in the newspaper company, thus becoming the single largest shareholder.

In two separate filings with Bursa Malaysia yesterday, the media company announced that he acquired 35 million shares for RM6.65 million, translating to a share price of 19 sen each.

This is an increase of 7.5 sen from the current price of 11.5 sen.

Abd Aziz, according to the filings, had acquired the shares via Opulence Asia Sdn Bhd from political party Umno.

Umno, prior to the share acquisition, was the largest shareholder of Utusan with a 49.77 per cent stake, or 55.11 million shares.

Abd Aziz had given his notice of intention to deal in securities during closed period pending the announcement by Utusan of its financial results for the quarter ended December 31 2018 on February 4 this year.

The publisher had last year posted a cumulative nine-month loss of RM42.4 million, pushing it into Practice Note 17 (PN17) territory.

In an earlier announcement to the stock exchange, Utusan said it was in the midst of formulating a regularisation plan to address its PN17 status.

Utusan shares closed unchanged at 11.5 sen yesterday.