DBS Securities is responsible for arranging a placement as required by the stock exchange to ensure that at least 25 per cent of Yukon is in public hands.

Yukon closed unchanged at $1.32 yesterday.

The chairman of the new board of directors, Li Chun, said yesterday Yukon would change its name to Bestwide Group.

Mr Li, who owns 84 per cent of Excellent Fortune and is also the sole owner of Best Wide Development, said Yukon was bought because of time-saving considerations.

'We want to be quick. There are so many opportunities in Hong Kong. It takes at least three years for us to arrange flotation and we would then miss the opportunities,' he said.

However, Mr Li declined to reveal when Excellent Fortune or Best Wide Development would inject assets into Yukon.

He said Yukon had strong interests in textile and property development, which were in line with the business of Excellent Fortune.

He attributed the heavy losses of Yukon over the past few years to its dependence on the United States and European markets and said Yukon would return to the black shortly by shifting its focus to China and Southeast Asia.

Yukon suffered a loss of $14.56 million in the last fiscal year ended March after a loss of $11.8 million in the previous year, representing losses per share of 6.8 cents and 5.2 cents, respectively.

For the six months to September 30, it made an unaudited profit of $18.7 million after the disposal of assets, but it still reported an operating loss of $9.6 million.